* 


HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS, 


LECTURES,  ADDRESSES, 


AND 


OTHER  WRITINGS : 

BY   HORACE    OREELEY. 


TI.VSTRN*  the  day,  just  Heaven.' 

Accomplish  thy  design, 
And  lot  the  blessing's  Thou  hast  freely  given 

Freely  on  all  mt-n  shine  ; 
Till  Equal  Rights  he  equally  enjoyed, 
And  human  power  for  human  srood  employed  ; 
Till  Law,  and  not  the  Sovereign.  rule  sustain, 
And  Peace  and  Virtue  undisputed  rei«n.  HENRY  WARK. 


ONCF.  the  welcome  Light  ha^  broken, 

Who  shall  say 
What  the  uninmsrined  trlories 

Of  the  day  ? 
What  the  evil  that  shall  perish 

In  its  ray  ? 

Aid  the  dawninsr,  Tonsrue  and  Pen' 
Aid  it,  hopes  of  honest  men! 
Aid  it.  Paper!  aid  it.  Type! 
Aid  il,  for  the  hour  is  ripe! 
And  our  earnest  must  not  slacken 

Into  play: 
Men  of  Thought,  and  Men  of  Action. 

rr.FAR  THF:  WAV!  CHAPI.PS  MACK  AY. 


NEW- YORK  : 
HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  82  CLIFF-STREET. 

1850. 


tl 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1850, 

BY  HORACE  GREELEY, 

in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States,  in  nnd  for  the 
Southern  District  of  New  York. 


TO 

THE  GENEROUS,  THE  HOPEFUL,  THE  LOVING, 

WHO, 

FIRMLY  AND  JOYFULLY  BELIEVING    IN  THE  IMPARTIAL  AND 
BOUNDLESS  GOODNESS  OF  OUR  FATHER, 


••frnst, 


THAT  THE  ERRORS,  THE  CRIMES,  AND  THE  MISERIES, 
WHICH  HAVE  LONG  RENDERED  EARTH  A  HELL, 

SHALL  YET  BE  SWALLOWED  IT  AND  FORGOTTEN, 

IN  A  FAR  EXCEEDING  AND  UNMEASURED  REIGN  OF 

TRUTH,  PURITY,  AND  BLISS, 

Cjbfs  Volume 

FS  RKHPEr.TFUT.LY  AND  AFFECTIONATELY  INSCRIBED, 

RV 

THE   AUTHOR. 


PREFACE. 


CARLYLE,  if  i  rightly  remember,  tells  us  of  an  impulsive 
Frenchman,  who,  in  the  very  crisis  of  the  great  Revolution, 
when  the  frenzied  public  mind  was  intent  on  nothing  short  of 
the  world's  regeneration,  and  the  due  and  ample  feeding  of  the 
Guillotine  as  essential  thereto,  rose  in  the  National  Convention, 
full  to  bursting  with  an  idea  which  he  could  710  longer  stifle, 
and  vociferated,  "  Mr.  President,  I  move  that  all  the  knaves 
'  and  dastards  be  arrested  !"  —  the  very  thing,  you  see,  that  the 
whole  People  were  intent  on,  expressed  in  one  very  compact 
sentence.  Where  prisons  could  be  found  to  hold  the  arrested, 
or  jailers  to  guard  them, — much  more,  provisions  to  subsist 
them  —  the  mover  had  never  stopped  to  calculate.  He  saw 
clearly  that  the  fundamental  evil,  parent  and  fountain  of  all 
others,  was  the  impunity  allowed,  the  favor  manifestly  shown, 
to  Knavery  and  Cowardice,  and  he  was  bent  on  a  Radical 
Reform.  A  right  good  fellow,  he  was,  too,  at  heart,  I  am  sure, 
though  not,  perhaps,  so  practically  sagacious,  so  readily  cog 
nizant  of  the  relations  of  means  to  ends,  as  he  might  have  been. 
As  lie  grew  older,  he  doubtless  became  cooler,  sager,  more 
1* 


6  PREFACE. 

considerate,  more  conservative ;  .yet  one  may  well  doubt 
whether  he  ever  rose  above  the  moral  altitude  of  his  single 
recorded  inspiration, 

Thif?  apprehension  of  all  the  knaves  and  dastards,  if  you  but 
consider,  is  one  of  tiie  chief  ends  of  Man's  existence  and  effort 
on  earth.  A  very  arduous  and  tedious  work,  you  may  well 
pronounce  it,  especially  when  you  observe  that  they  who 
should  combine  to  do  it,  including  many  of  those  who  think 
they  are  doing  it,  with  those  who  make  a  show  of  doing 
it,  in  the  hope  of  imposing  on  their  cotemporaries  if  not  on 
themselves,  are  personally  of  the  very  class  on  whom  the 
operation  needs  to  be  performed.  It  were  a  study  to  see 
the  work  really  effected,  and  note  how  many  who  at  the 
outset  were  flourishing  handcuffs  and  trying  to  fit  them  to 
their  neighbors'  wrists,  holding  up  ponderous  jail-keys  and 
calling  out,  '  This  way,  brother  officers  !  Here 's  where  the 
culprits  are  to  be  secured  till  further  orders !'  would  find 
themselves  wearing  the  ruffles  and  tenanting  cells  at  the  close, 
with  eyes  of  blank  amazement  and  visages  of  yard  measure 
Not  entirely  a  novel  spectacle  would  this  be,  and  yet  deeply 
interesting  and  instructive. 

Yes,  'the  arrest  of  all  the  knaves  and  dastards'  —  or  rather 
their  thorough  cure  of  knavery  and  cowardice — is  a  task  given 
us  to  perform,  and  each  must  strive  to  do  his  part  of  it,  even 
though  with  painful  distrust  that  he  himself  is  not  wholly  free 
from  the  vices  he  is  laboring  to  eradicate.  The  more  evil  ho 
discerns  or  suspects  in  himself,  the  harder  he  should  labor  for 
the  general  abolition  and  extinction  of  evil,  beginning  with 
his  own  faults  but  not  forgetting  that  others  also  deserve  and 
require  effort  for  their  eradication.  Perchance  in  the  gene- 


PREFACE.  7 

ral  warfare  against  injustice,  meanness  and  wrong,  the  sincere 
soul  finds  the  best  attainable  discipline  and  corrective  for  its 
own  faults  and  errors. 

The  volume  herewith  presented  is  mainly  composed  of  Lec 
tures  prompted  by  invitations  to  address  Popular  Lyceums  and 
Young  Men's  Associations,  generally  those  of  the  humbler 
class,  existing  in  country  villages  and  rural  townships.  These 
Lectures  were  written  in  the  years  from  1842  to  1848  inclu 
sive,  each  in  haste,  to  fulfil  some  engagement  already  made,  for 
which  preparation  had  been  delayed,  under  the  pressure  of 
seeming  necessities,  to  the  latest  moment  allowable.  A  calling 
whose  exactions  are  seldom  intermitted  for  a  day,  never  for  a 
longer  period,  and  whose  requirements,  already  excessive,  seem 
perpetually  to  expand  and  increase,  may  well  excuse  the  dis 
traction  of  thought  and  rapidity  of  composition  which  it  renders 
inevitable.  At  no  time  has  it  seemed  practicable  to  devote  a 
whole  day,  seldom  a  full  half  day,  to  the  production  of  any  of 
the  essays  contained  in  this  volume.  Not  until  months  after 
the  last  of  them  was  written  did  the  idea  of  collecting  and 
printing  them  in  this  shape  suggest  itself,  and  a  hurried  pe 
rusal  is  all  that  has  since  been  given  them.  The  Lecture 
here  entitled  '  The  Organization  of  Labor'  has  been  recast  in 
part,  to  conform  it  to  the  existing  state  of  facts ;  the  others 
are  printed  as  they  were  delivered.  Some  of  them  are  more 
florid  in  style  than  my  present  mood  would  dictate  —  that  enti 
tled  '  Human  Life'  especially  —  but  they  were  faithful  tran 
scripts  of  the  mind  whence  they  emanated  at  the  time  they 
were  written,  and  I  could  not  now  change  without  destroying 
them.  Should  their  diction  provoke  the  critic's  sneer,  so  be  it : 


8  PREFACE. 

I  am  tolerably  case-hardened  to  the  shafts  of  periodical  wit, 
and  shall  receive  any  that  may  be  in  store  for  me  with  forti 
tude  if  not  with  complacency.  I  am  quite  aware  that  the 
Literary  merits  of  this  volume  are  inconsiderable  indeed. 

But  this  work  has  a  loftier  and  worthier  aim  than  that  of  fine 
writing.  It  aspires  to  be  a  mediator,  an  interpreter,  a  recon 
ciler,  between  Conservatism  and  Radicalism — to  bring  the  two 
into  such  connection  and  relation  that  the  good  in  each  may 
obey  the  law  of  chemical  affinity,  and  abandon  whatever  por 
tion  of  either  is  false,  mistaken  or  outworn,  to  sink  down  and 
perish.  It  endeavors  so  to  elucidate  and  commend  what  is  just 
and  practical  in  the  pervading  demands  of  our  time  for  a  Social 
Renovation  that  the  humane  and  philanthropic  can  no  longer 
misrepresent  and  malign  them  as  destructive,  demoralizing  or 
infidel  in  their  tendencies,  but  must  joyfully  recognize  in  them  the 
fruits  of  past  and  the  seeds  of  future  Progress  in  the  history  of 
our  Race.  Defective  and  faulty  as  these  '  Hints'  may  be  found 
or  judged,  I  feel  confident  that  their  tendency  is  to  practical 
beneficence,  and  that  their  influence,  however  circumscribed, 
can  not  be  otherwise  than  wholesome.  In  the  absence  of  any 
reasonable  ground  of  hope  for  personal  gain  or  popularity,  this 
trust  must  justify  my  intrusion  upon  the  public,  for  the  first 
and  perhaps  for  the  last  time,  as  the  author  of  a  book. 

The  great  truths  that  every  human  being  is  morally  bound, 
by  a  law  of  our  Social  condition,  to  leave  the  world  somewhat 
better  for  his  having  lived  in  it — that  no  one  able  to  earn 
bread  has  any  moral  right  to  eat  without  earning  it — that  the 
obligation  to  be  industrious  and  useful  is  not  invalidated  by  the 
possession  of  wealth  nor  by  the  generosity  of  wealthy  rela 
tives —  that  useful  doing  in  any  capacity  or  vocation  is  honor- 


PREFACE.  9 

able  and  noble,  while  idleness  and  prodigality  in  whatever 
station  of  life  arc  base  and  contemptible  —  that  every  one 
willing  to  work  has  a  clear  social  and  moral  right  to  Opportu 
nity  to  Labor  and  to  secure  the  fair  recompense  of  such  Labor, 
which  Society  can  not  deny  him  without  injustice  —  and  that 
these  truths  demand  and  predict  a  comprehensive  Social  Re 
form  based  upon  and  molded  by  their  dictates  —  these  will  be 
found  faithfully  if  not  forcibly  set  forth  and  elucidated  in  the 
following  pages.  Of  course,  as  the  Lectures  were  written 
independently  of  ^ach  other,  and  with  intervals  of  months  and 
often  years  between  them,  the  reader  can  hardly  fail  to  find  the 
same  proposition  restated,  the  same  arguments  adduced,  the 
same  illustrations  employed,  in  two  or  more  instances.  Each 
Lecture  is  a  separate  thesis,  deriving  (I  trust)  confirmation  and 
support  from  others,  but  not  maintaining  connection  therewith. 
And  ui  the  arrangement  of  the  volume,  so  far  as  any  plan  was 
kopt  in  view,  diversity  and  variety  rather  than  continuity  and 
consecutiveness  were  deemed  desirable.  I  know  how  easily 
the  public  mind  grows  weary  of  dry  discussion. 

—  Of  the  briefer  Essays  which  conclude  the  volume,  two 
only  —  that  on  '  Death  by  Human  Law'  and  that  on  «  Flogging 
in  the  Navy'  —  have  been  recast  expressly  for  this  work,  and 
these  but  to  give  a  more  compact  and  methodical  expression  to 
views  already  submitted  in  other  forms  to  the  ordeal  of  public 
judgment.  Four  or  five  of  these  essays  (mainly  of  a  religious 
cast)  were  written  from  year  to  year  for  '  The  Rose  of  Sharon* 
Annual,  while  the  residue  have  in  good  part  appeared  at  va 
rious  times  in  the  columns  of  The  Tribune.  These  were 
generally  suggested  by  some  recent  event,  some  apparent  pub- 


10  PREFACE. 

lie  necessity,  but  I  hope  they  will  not  be  found  antiquated  nor 
out  of  place  now  and  here. 

—  I  trust  this  explanation  of  the  impulse  and  character  of 
these  « Hints'  will  not  be  mistaken  for  an  apology.  I  make 
none,  arid  solicit  no  lenity.  I  inculpate  no  partial  friend,  no 
delighted  auditor,  as  instigating  this  volume.  If  there  be  no 
true  worth  in  it,  let  the  serious  guilt  of  adding  another  to  the 
deplorable  multitude  of  books  unfit  to  be  read  rest  on  my 
shoulders  alone.  But  if  it  shall  be  found  to  utter  any  word 
calculated  to  irradiate,  however  faintly  or  transiently,  the  on 
ward  pathway  of  our  Race,  then  it  will  stand  fully  justified, 
though  all  the  critics  should  unite  to  blast  it  by  their  fiercest 
maledictions  or  their  more  fatal  silence.  H.  G. 

NEW- YORK,  April  20,  1850. 


CONTENTS. 


I.— THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR :   A  Lecture PAGE    13 

jr.— LIFE  — THE   IDEAL  AND   THE   ACTUAL:  A  Lecture 51 

III.— THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER  :  A  Lecture 85 

IV.— THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR:   An  Address 112 

V.— HUMAN  LIFE:  A  Lecture 149 

VI.— THE  ORGANIZATION  OF   LABOR:    A  Lecture 179 

VH.— TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING  :    A  Lecture 20G 

VTIL— LABOR'S  POLITICAL    ECONOMY  :  An  Essay 232 

IX.— ALCOHOLIC   LIQUORS  — TIIKIR  NATURE  AND  EFFECTS 257 

X.— THE  SOCIAL  ARCHITECTS  —  FOURIER  :  A  Loctuiv 272 

XI.— BRIEF  REFORM  ESSAYS  : 

DEATH   BY  HUMAN   LAW 301 

vLAND   REFORM 311 

HOMESTEAD  EXEMPTION 322 

THE  RIGHT  TO  LABOR 31fl 

LIVING  AND   MEANS 320 

PITY  HIS   FAMILY' 329 

FLOGGING  IN  THE  NAVY 33  L 

THE   UNION  OF  WORKERS 33.") 

.THE  TRADE   REFORM 342 

WHAT  FREE  TRADE   is  DOING 348 

SLAVERY  AT  HOME 352 

TOBACCO 357 

COMING  TO  THE   CITY 35!) 

STRIKES  AND  THEIII  REMEDY 3fU 

GLIMPSES  OF  A  BETTER  LIFE 3(17 

THE  AIMS   OF  LIFE 374 

THE   UNFULFILLED   MISSION  OF  CHRISTIANITY 379 

THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  AGE 385 

THE  IDEAL  OF  A  TRUE  LIFE 392 

HUMANITY...  396 


HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 


i. 

THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR: 

A    LECTURE. 

WORK  stands  in  no  need  of  eulogium.  From  olden  times 
Priests  and  Poets  have  vied  with  Orators  and  Statesmen  in 
heaping  praises  and  flatteries  on  the  man  of  honest,  inde 
pendent,  useful  toil.  Not  merely  have  these  resonantly 
proclaimed  that  he  ought  to  be,  but  that  he  is  the  most 
blessed  among  mortals.  Indeed,  an  unsophisticated  listener  or 
reader  might  well  imbibe  the  notion  that  all  these  honeyed 
eulogists,  earth's  great  and  glorious,  had  been  thrust  out,  by 
some  harsh  decree  of  inexorable  Fate,  from  the  plow-field 
and  the  work-bench  —  sent  sorrowing  exiles  into  forums  or 
senates  —  and  there  compelled  to  witness  afar  off  the  felicities 
they  too  might  have  enjoyed  had  they  been  born  under 
kindlier  stars,  and  to  be  content,  in  their  sublime  self-denial, 
with  but  depicting  the  delights  of  digging  and  delving,  which 
only  the  more  fortunate  millions  must  enjoy. 

Yet,  in  the  midst  of  all  this  deluge  of  flattery  and  felici 
tation,  the  Worker  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  stands  a  sad 
and  care-worn  man.  Once  in  a  while  a  particularly  flowery 
Fourth-of-July  Oration,  Political  harangue,  or  Thanksgiving 


14  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Sermon,  catching  him  well-filled  with  creature-comforts  and 
a  little  inclined  to  soar  starward,  will  take  him  off  his  feet, 
and  for  an  hour  or  two  he  will  wonder  if  ever  human  lot  was 
so  blest  as  that  of  the  free-born  American  laborer.  He  hur 
rahs,  cavorts,  and  is  ready  to  knock  any  man  down  who  will 
not  readily  and  heartily  agree  that  this  is  a  great  country, 
and  our  industrious  classes  the  happiest  people  on  earth. 
The  hallucination  passes  off,  however,  with  the  silvery  tones 
of  the  orator,  the  exhilarating  fumes  of  the  liquor  which  in 
spired  it.  The  inhaler  of  the  bewildering  gas  bends  his  slow 
steps  at  length  to  his  sorry  domicile,  or  wakes  therein  on  the 
morrow,  in  a  sober  and  practical  mood.  His  very  exaltation, 
now  past,  has  rendered  him  more  keenly  susceptible  to  the 
deficiencies  and  impediments  which  hem  him  in  :  his  house 
seems  narrow  ;  his  food  coarse  ;  his  furniture  scanty  ;  his 
prospects  gloomy,  and  those  of  his  children  more  sombre,  if 
possible  ;  and  as  he  hurries  off  to  the  day's  task  which  he 
has  too  long  neglected  and  for  which  he  has  little  heart,  he 
too  falls  into  that  train  of  thought  which  is  beginning  to  en 
circle  the  globe,  and  of  which  the  burden  may  be  freely 
rendered  thus  — "  Why  should  those  by  whose  toil  ALL  com 
forts  and  luxuries  are  produced  or  made  available  enjoy  so 
scanty  a  share  of  them,  ?  Why  should  a  man  able  and  eager 
to  work  ever  stand  idle  for  want  of  employment  in  a  world 
where  so  much  needful  work  impatiently  awaits  the  doing  ? 
Why  should  a  man  be  required  to  surrender  something  of 
his  independence  in  accepting  the  employment  which  will  en 
able  him  to  earn  by  honest  effort  the  bread  of  his  family  ? 
Why  should  the  man  who  faithfully  labors  for  another  and 
receives  therefor  less  than  the  product  of  his  labor  be  cur 
rently  held  the  obliged  party,  rather  than  he  who  buys  the 
work  and  makes  a  good  bargain  of  it  ?  In  short,  Why 
should  Speculation  and  Scheming  ride  so  jauntily  in  their 
carriages,  splashing  honest  Work  as  it  trudges  humbly  and 
wearily  by  on  foot  ?"  —  Such,  as  I  interpret  it,  is  the  problem 


THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  15 

which  occupies  and  puzzles  the  knotted  brain  of  Toil  in  our 
day.  Let  us  ponder  it. 

But  first,  let  us  look  at  the  whole  matter  in  the  light  in 
which  it  presents  itself  to  Conservatism,  or  the  champions  of 
the  established  order  of  things.  We  can  lose  nothing,  we 
may  gain  something  of  insight,  by  so  regarding  it,  which  will 
reward  a  few  moments'  attention.  Inestimable  is  the  value 
of  a  Fact,  if  we  do  but  rightly  apprehend  it ;  and  very  strong 
is  the  inherent  presumption  that  the  shape  things  have 
actually,  and  as  we  say  naturally,  taken  is  the  very  best  they 
could  have  taken,  all  things  considered,  including  the  nature 
of  Man.  Let  us  look,  then,  at  this  whole  matter  of  Labor, 
its  Condition  and  Recompense,  as  it  must  appear  to  the  men 
of  substance  and  of  thrift  all  around  us. 

All  extreme  statements  begin  and  end  in  error,  and  nothing 
can  be  more  mistaken  than  the  vulgar  presumption  that 
Wealth  goes  by  luck,  or  in  fact  that,  searchingly  regarded, 
there  is  any  such  thing  as  luck  in  the  Universe.  The  man 
of  respectability  and  property,  whose  blocks  of  houses  adorn 
the  busiest  streets  of  our  towns,  and  whose  note  goes  un 
questioned  in  bank,  can  you  think  him  distinguished  by  no 
substantial  qualities  from  those  who  were  his  playmates  and 
schoolmates,  and  who  are  now  his  tenants  and  hirelings? 
O  rely  on  it,  there  is  no  such  instance  of  results  without  a 
cause  in  Nature  !  The  man  may  be  no  better,  I  readily 
grant  you,  than  those  around  him  —  perhaps  in  the  truest 
sense  no  wiser  —  but  very  different  he  must  be,  and  for  that 
one  purpose  of  accumulating  property,  a  vastly  superior  being. 
Tried  in  History  or  Geography,  in  Psalmody  or  the  Cate 
chism,  he  might  prove  of  small  account ;  but  in  that  wisdom 
which  coins  dollars  from  rocks  and  extracts  fertility  from 
marshes  and  miasms,  he  must  be  an  adept.  Nay,  I  go 
farther,  and  insist  that  a  keen  eye  would  have  readily  picked 
him  out  from  among  his  schoolmates,  and  said,  '  Here  is  the 
lad  who  will  die  a  Bank  President,  owning  factories  and 


16  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

blocks  of  stores  !'  Now  let  us  see  how  the  questions  we 
meditate  must  appear  to  this  thrifty,  practical  man : 

Trace  his  history  closely,  and  you  will  find  that  in  his  boy 
hood  he  was  provident  and  frugal — that  he  shunned  expense 
and  dissipation — that  he  feasted  and  quaffed  seldom,  unless 
at  others'  cost — that  he  was  rarely  seen  at  balls  or  frolics  — 
that  he  was  diligent  in  study  and  in  business  —  that  he  did 
not  hesitate  to  do  an  uncomfortable  job,  if  it  bade  fair  to  be 
profitable — that  he  husbanded  his  hours  and  made  each 
count  one,  either  in  earning  or  in  preparing  to  work  effi 
ciently.  He  rarely  or  never  stood  idle  because  the  business 
offered  him  was  esteemed  ungenteel  or  disagreeable  —  he 
laid  up  a  few  dollars  during  his  minority,  which  proved  a 
sensible  help  to  him  on  going  into  business  for  himself — he 
married  seasonably,  prudently,  respectably  —  he  lived  frugally 
and  delved  steadily  until  it  clearly  became  him  to  live  better, 
and  until  he  could  employ  his  time  to  better  advantage  than 
at  the  plow  or  over  the  bench.  Thus  his  first  thousand 
dollars  came  slowly  but  surely ;  the  next  more  easily  and 
readily  by  the  help  of  the  former ;  the  next,  of  course,  more 
easily  still ;  until  now  he  adds  thousands  to  his  hoard  with 
little  apparent  effort  or  care.  But  the  germ  of  all  this 
spreading  oak  was  in  the  tough  acorn  whence  it  sprang. 
Given  the  original  qualities  of  the  lad,  all  beyond  was  plainly 
deducible  therefrom,  unless  prevented  by  death  or  some 
extreme  calamity. 

Now  we  shall  but  waste  our  breath  in  attempting  to  con 
vince  this  man  that  the  world  is  not  a  very  good  world 
as  it  stands,  and  labor  rewarded  exactly  as  it  should  be. 
Talk  to  him  of  the  wants  and  woes  of  the  Poor,  and  he 
will  answer  you  that  their  sons  can  afford  to  smoke  and 
drink  freely,  which  he  at  their  age  could  not ;  and  that  he 
now  meets  many  of  these  poor  in  the  market,  buying 
luxuries  that  he  can  not  afford.  Dwell  on  the  miseries 
occasioned  by  a  dearth  of  employment,  and  he  will  reply 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  17 

that  he  never  encountered  any  such  obstacle  when  poor ;  for 
when  he  could  find  nothing  better,  he  cleaned  streets  or 
stables,  and  when  he  could  not  command  twenty  dollars  a 
month,  he  fell  to  work  as  heartily  and  cheerfully  for  ten  or 
five.  In  vain  will  you  seek  to  explain  to  him  that  his  rare 
faculty  both  of  doing  and  of  finding  to  do  —  his  wise  adap 
tation  of  means  to  ends  in  all  circumstances,  his  frugality  and 
others'  improvidence  —  are  a  part  of  your  case  —  that  it  is 
precisely  because  all  are  not  created  so  handy,  so  thrifty, 
so  worldly-wise,  as  himself,  that  you  seek  so  to  modify  the 
laws  and  usages  of  Society  that  a  man  may  still  labor 
steadily,  efficiently,  and  live  comfortably,  although  his  youth 
was  not  improved  to  the  utmost,  and  though  his  can  never 
be  the  hand  that  transmutes  all  it  touches  to  gold.  Fail 
ing  here,  you  urge  that  at  least  his  children  should  be  guar 
antied  an  unfailing  opportunity  to  learn  and  to  earn,  and  that 
they,  surely,  should  not  suffer  nor  be  stifled  in  ignorance 
because  of  their  parent's  imperfections.  Still  you  talk  in 
Greek  to  the  man  of  substance,  unless  he  be  one  of  the  few 
who  have,  in  acquiring  wealth,  outgrown  the  idolatry  of  it, 
and  learned  to  regard  it  truly  as  a  means  of  doing  good,  and 
not  as  an  end  of  earthly  effort.  If  he  be  a  man  of  wealth 
merely,  still  cherishing  the  spirit  which  impelled  him  to  his 
life-long  endeavor,  the  world  appears  to  him  a  vast  battle 
field,  on  which  some  must  win  victory  and  glory  while  to 
others  are  accorded  shattered  joints  and  discomfiture,  and 
the  former  could  not  be,  or  would  lose  their  zest,  without 
the  latter. 

It  seems  to  him  quite  plain  that  all  might  become  as  rich 
as  he  is  if  they  would  make  the  needful  sacrifices  of  ease  and 
mortifications  of  appetite  ;  and  if  they  won't,  what  can  he  do 
for  them  ?  To  dissipate  his  fortune  in  prodigal  beneficence 
would  injure  thousands  and  bring  lasting  good  to  few  ;  to 
reduce  mankind  to  some  sort  of  Agrarian  level  would,  if 
practicable,  render  life  a  tame,  plodding,  humdrum  affair, 
2* 


18  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

hardly  worth  taking  as  a  gift.  In  fine,  the  world  appears  to 
him  the  best  that  could  be  for  the  men  and  women  who  in 
habit  it,  —  its  usages  and  laws  the  plain  dictates  of  Divine 
benignity  contemplating  human  depravity ;  and  to  all  your 
suggestions  of  radical  improvement  he  simply  shakes  his 
head  and  turns  away  to  inquire  the  price  of  Cotton  or  the 
chances  of  an  alteration  in  the  Tariff. 

Him  we  will  leave  for  a  season  to  his  more  congenial  pur 
suits,  while  we  inquire  and  consider  in  our  own  way  what 
changes  are  necessary  to  the  Emancipation  and  Social  ele 
vation  of  the  laborer.  I  affirm,  then,  that  there  are  three 
important  respects  in  which  the  condition  of  the  Laboring 
Mass,  even  of  our  own  countrymen,  may  be  improved,  ought 
to  be  improved,  and  in  regard  to  which  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
rich  and  powerful,  of  the  Church  and  the  State,  to  cowork  for 
the  required  melioration.  Of  these  I  would  place  first  in 
order,  though  perhaps  not  in  practical  importance, 

Their  relation  to  the  Soil.  I  place  this  first,  because  I 
think  Society  and  Government  have  been  guilty  of  a  positive, 
not  a  negative,  wrong  in  regard  to  it — a  wrong  of  usurpation 
and  misdoing,  and  not  merely  of  neglect  and  short-coming. 
God  created  the  earth  for  the  use  and  subsistence  of  man 
kind,  and  not  primarily  of  a  part,  and  of  the  rest  in  sub 
ordination  to  these.  By  Nature's  law,  use  and  improvement 
can  alone  vest  in  any  individual  a  right  to  call  some  spot  of 
earth  his  own,  and  exclude  all  others  from  the  enjoyment  and 
benefit  thereof.  Nothing  can  well  be  a  more  palpable  sub 
version  of  the  order  of  Providence  than  the  assumption  by 
Governments  of  a  right  to  grant  a  province  or  county  of 
virgin  soil  to  some  favorite,  whether  with  or  without  con 
sideration,  to  be  held  by  him  and  his  heirs  for  their  own  use 
and  benefit,  and  to  be  cultivated  and  improved  by  others  on 
terms  which  make  the  landlord  class  rich  without  labor  or 
useful  doing,  and  keep  the  tenant  class  mainly  poor  and  sub 
servient,  though  they  do  their  best.  If  there  ever  was  or 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  ID 

can  be  a  monstrous  subversion  of  the  order  of  Providence,  it 
is  here.  Man  has  a  natural  right  to  such  a  portion  of  the  earth 
not  already  improved  by  others  as  he  can  cultivate  and  make 
fruitful ;  the  act  of  Government  is  simply  officious  and  im 
pertinent  which  assumes  to  give  him  this,  and  it  is  a  gross 
usurpation  and  moral  nullity  to  undertake  to  give  him  more. 
As  well  might  it  attempt  to  farm  out  the  rain  or  sunshine, 
giving  to  one  man  all  that  falls  on  his  own  land  and  several 
of  his  neighbors',  and  directing  these  to  buy  so  much  as  they 
need  of  him.  What  Government  rightfully  may  and  ought 
to  do  in  the  premises  is  simply  to  determine  and  declare  the 
area  of  the  earth's  surface  which  one  man  may  justly,  and 
therefore  legally,  appropriate  to  himself  and  transmit  to  his  pos 
terity  without  encroaching  on  the  equal  natural  rights  of  others. 
In  a  young  and  thinly-peopled  community,  this  area  may  be 
larger  ;  as  population  increases  and  arts  are  perfected,  it  should 
be  gradually  reduced  and  the  freehold  left  vacant  to-day  by 
death  be  divided  among  the  heirs,  so  as  to  leave  no  one  in 
possession  of  more  than  the  public  good  prescribes  as  the 
maximum  for  any  one  man.  At  first,  a  mile  square  might  be 
allowable,  there  being  so  much  or  more  for  each  family  in 
the  community  ;  and  we  see  that  this  allotment  has  been  de 
cided  upon  in  the  settlement  of  Oregon.  I  can  not  doubt 
that  this  is  far  too  much,  whether  we  regard  individual  or 
general  good  ;  that  the  settlers,  thus  held  apart  by  their 
mutual  grasping,  will  lose  vastly  more  in  education,  social 
intercourse,  neighborly  kindnesses,  than  they  can  possibly 
gain  in  ultimate  wealth.  If  the  principle  of  Limitation  had 
been  early  adopted  and  maintained,  I  presume  a  much 
smaller  area  would  have  been  deemed  ample.  As  it  is,  the 
emigrant  to  Oregon  grasps  not  for  himself  and  his  children, 
his  flocks  and  herds  only,  but  with  a  view  to  his  future 
aggrandizement  by  selling  off  or  renting  to  others.  But  let 
a  colony  on  a  territory,  say  of  50,000  arable  square  miles, 
begin  by  allotting  to  each  pioneer  a  square  mile,  if  he  be  un- 


20  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

wisely  greedy  enough  to  desire  so  much,  with  the  express 
understanding,  however,  that  this  area  is  to  be  diminished  to 
future  occupants  so  soon  and  so  fast  as  the  increase  of  pop 
ulation  shall  demand  it,  and  that  meantime  no  person  shall 
be  allowed  upon  any  pretext  to  acquire  more  than  the 
maximum  prescribed  by  law. 

1  What !'  says  an  objector,  '  would  you  take  away  a  part 
1  of  a  man's  land,  honestly  acquired  by  inheritance,  gift  or 
'  purchase,  and  give  it  to  some  one  else  who  needs  it  ?' 
No,  sir !  there  is  no  call  for  this.  Let  every  man  keep 
through  life  what  the  law  has  once  decided  to  be  his.  But 
when  the  landlord  of  thousands  of  acres  shall  die,  it  is  per 
fectly  just,  it  is  urgently  expedient,  that  the  Law  which  has 
assured  and  guarded  his  ample  possessions  shall  say  with 
regard  to  Land  aggregation,  as  it  has  long  said  with  regard 
to  Usury,  '  Thus  far  and  no  farther  !'  Let  the  dying  rich 
man  leave  all  his  wealth  to  his  heirs,  but  let  him  not  perpet 
uate  the  Land  Monopoly  which  reason  conspires  with  expe 
rience  in  pronouncing,  prejudicial  to  the  dearest  interests 
of  mankind.  The  law  may  say,  and  should  say,  '  Take  the 
property,  Messrs,  heirs,  and  share  it  as  you  shall  agree,  or  as 
the  ministers  of  justice  shall  decide ;  only  it  is  decreed  that 
none  of  you  shall  take  and  retain  beyond  a  certain  limit,  say 
320  acres,  of  arable  soil :  whatever  falls  to  any  one  in  excess 
of  that  must  be  sold  within  a  year  to  some  person  who  will 
still  have  less  than  the  legal  maximum.'  After  a  few  years, 
this  will  have  been  entirely  adjusted,  and,  no  man  having 
more  than  the  maximum  quantity,  none  will  be  restricted  in 
disposing  of  what  he  has  ;  only  the  man  who  has  already  as 
much  as  the  law  allows  him  will  be  required,  on  coming  in 
to  possession  of  more,  to  choose  what  portions  of  the  whole, 
not  exceeding  the  legal  maximum,  he  will  retain,  selling  the 
residue  to  some  one  who  has  no  land,  or  less  than  the  legal 
allowance,  within  the  term  specified  by  law.  When  population 
shall  have  grown  considerably  more  dense,  a  narrower  limit 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  21 

may  justly  be  enacted,  to  which  possessions  shall  he  required 
gradually  to  conform,  as  we  have  already  seen. 

I  might  well  despair  of  impressing  on  any  mind  which  has 
not  hitherto  reflected  on  this  subject  the  vital  importance  and 
vast  beneficence  of  the  principle  of  Land  Limitation.  To 
me  it  seems  the  very  key  of  the  arch  which  is  destined 
to  upbear  the  unportioned  millions  from  their  measureless 
degradation  and  abounding  misery.  I  trace  the  frequent 
lack  of  employment,  the  scanty  reward,  and  the  meager  sub 
sistence,  often  accorded  to  Labor,  directly  to  the  resistless 
influence  of  Land  Monopoly.  Here,  for  example,  is  a  new 
community,  just  emerging  from  barbarism  or  just  planted  on 
a  virgin  soil.  For  a  season  all  goes  well  with  it ;  no  man 
stands  idle  for  want  of  employment,  and  Industry  reaps  what 
it  has  sown.  But  population  gradually  increases  ;  the  land 
is  all  appropriated  ;  and  good  arable  soil  gradually  rises  in 
market  value  from  ten  to  one  hundred  dollars  per  acre,  and 
perhaps  higher.  Is  it  not  inevitable  that  it  is  now  far  more 
difficult  than  formerly  for  the  portionless  young  man  to  buy 
a  farm  and  become  his  own  employer "?  and  that  he  who 
cultivates  as  the  tenant  or  hireling  of  another  must  now 
receive  for  his  labor  a  far  smaller  share  of  its  product  than 
of  old  ?  Suppose  the  crop  be  Corn,  and  the  average 
yield  thirty  bushels  to  the  acre,  worth  fifteen  dollars  ;  one 
dollar  of  this,  or  a  fifteenth  part  of  the  product,  would  have 
paid  the  rent  when  the  land  was  valued  at  ten  dollars  ;  but 
now  it  takes  six  dollars,  or  two  fifths  of  the  entire  product. 
But  population  still  increases,  and  its  increase  steadily 
carries  up  the  market  value  of  land,  until  at  length  the  corn 
field  becomes  worth  three  hundred  dollars  per  acre,  from 
sheer  force  of  competition  and  necessity  acting  upon  those 
who  have  no  land  and  yet  must  live.  Now  the  tenant  can 
no  longer  afford  to  grow  Corn,  unless  he  can  immensely  in 
crease  the  product,  or  unless  he  is  willing  to  perform  all  the 
labor  and  run  all  the  risks  of  blight,  hail,  drouth,  frost,  &c., 


22  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

and  give  the  entire  avails  of  a  full  harvest  for  the  privilege 
of  cultivation.  It  seems  to  me  impossible,  with  Land  station 
ary  and  incapable  of  increase,  Ownership  naturally  tending 
to  fewer  and  fewer  hands,  and  population  inimitably  increas 
ing,  that  the  subsistence  of  the  Laboring  Mass  should  not 
become  more  and  more  meager  and  precarious,  and  their 
condition  more  and  more  depressed  and  hopeless. 

For  the  last  half-century,  this  tendency  has  been  partially 
counteracted  by  the  invention  of  Labor-saving  Machinery 
and  the  immense  development  of  natural  and  mechanical  re 
sources.  Thus  it  is  computed  that  the  labor  now  annually 
performed  in  England  would  have  required  the  best  efforts 
of  at  least  twenty  times  the  present  population  of  that  island 
two  centuries  ago.  Yet  such  is  the  evil  influence  of  the 
Land  Monopoly  so  fearfully  prevalent  there  that,  though  the 
present  Laboring  Class  of  England  accomplish  twenty  times 
as  much  as  did  their  ancestors  two  centuries  back,  they  yet 
receive  a  more  scanty  reward,  (computed  not  in  money,  but 
in  the  necessaries  of  life,)  are  worse  fed,  lodged,  more  severely 
worked,  and  hardly  better  clad  nor  taught,  than  those  ances 
tors  were.  Capital,  monopolizing  Land  and  Machinery, 
takes  all  the  profit  of  Labor  to  itself.  The  recompense  of 
Toil  has  not  increased,  but  the  rent  and  valuation  of  Land 
have  immensely.  And  the  number  of  substantial  proprietors, 
inconsiderable  since  the  fatal  Norman  Conquest,  is  still  sen 
sibly  diminishing.  A  Scotch  Duke  owns  a  tract  100  miles 
by  70,  while  twenty-nine  thirtieths  of  the  whole  People  re 
main  on  the  island  at  the  good  pleasure  and  sufferance  of 
the  other  thirtieth,  and  might  be  legally  driven  into  exile  by 
that  inconsiderable  fraction  at  any  time  it  chose. 

In  this  country,  things  have  come  to  no  such  pass 
as  yet,  thanks  to  our  Republican  institutions  and  to  the 
Republican  spirit  which  generally  pervaded  and  directed 
the  first  settlers  on  these  shores.  There  are  portions  of 
our  continent  where  a  vicious  system  of  granting  vast 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  23 

tracts  of  wilderness  to  some  favorite  of  the  British  crown 
or  of  some  provincial  governor,  or  the  sale  of  millions  of 
acres  at  a  nominal  price  by  some  step-mother  State  to 
one  or  more  speculators,  has  engendered  some  portion  of 
the  evils  whereof  unhappy  Ireland  affords  the  most  con 
spicuous  example  ;  but,  in  the  main,  land  has  been  com 
paratively  easy  of  acquirement,  and  the  vast  stretch  of  still 
untamed  forest  has  operated  as  a  perpetual  check  on  the 
cupidity  of  forestallers.  Yet  this  exemption  has  been  com 
parative  only.  I  am  personally  acquainted  with  extensive 
regions  which,  having  fallen  within  the  grasp  of  monopoly, 
have  been  parceled  out  in  small  allotments  to  indigent 
pioneers  on  credit  at  two  or  three  dollars  per  acre  ;  and  these 
pioneers,  after  wrestling  from  ten  to  twenty  years  with  priva 
tion,  hardship,  fevers,  the  giant  forest  and  the  prowling  wild 
beast,  until  fertility  and  beauty  were  beginning  to  smile  on 
their  little  openings,  found  themselves  utterly  unable  to  pay 
the  stipulated  price  and  accumulated  interest  while  maintain 
ing  their  families,  and  thus  were  compelled  to  abandon  their 
hard-won  homes  and  plunge  afresh  into  the  wilderness,  often 
with  broken  constitutions  and  in  the  evening  of  their  days. 
Some  are  now  hard  at  work  on  their  third  or  fourth  experi 
ment  of  this  kind  in  Wisconsin  or  Iowa.  I  do  not  say  that 
all  of  them  have  been  as  industrious,  frugal,  temperate,  as 
they  should  have  been.  I  know  well  that  many  have  not, 
and  that  others  are  justly  termed  bad  managers.  I  give  full 
force  to  all  this,  and  still  say  that  the  State  should  have  se 
cured  to  these  poor  men,  for  their  families'  sake  if  not  for 
their  own,  the  homesteads  which  they  first  wrested  from  the 
wilderness,  so  that  no  clutch  of  speculator  or  whisky-seller 
could  have  torn  those  homes  from  under  them.  And  I  can 
not  doubt  that  the  errors  of  the  past,  once  detected  and 
vividly  portrayed,  will  be  guarded  against  in  future. 

A  limitation  of  the  area  of  arable  land  which  any  man  may 
acquire  and  hold,  and  an  exemption  of  a  far  more  restricted 


24  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Homestead  of  a  family  from  involuntary  transfer  by  mortgage 
or  execution,  are  twin  measures  which,  after  a  few  years  of 
denunciation  and  abuse,  will  be  understood,  approved,  and 
enduringly  engrafted  upon  our  Constitutions  and  statutes. 
That  these  will  do  much  to  secure  employment  and  adequate 
reward  to  labor,  wherever  adopted,  I  can  not  doubt.  Few 
have  any  idea  of  the  extent  to  which  Labor  is  now  obstructed 
by  Land  Monopoly.  The  starving  poor  of  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland  might  be  abundantly  employed  and  subsisted  on 
the  rich  soil  now  uselessly,  ostentatiously  devoted  to  im 
mense  Parks,  Forests,  and  Game-Preserves.  I  was,  in  1845, 
discussing  with  an  eminent  Western  Statesman  the  effects 
of  Protection  and  Manufacturing  on  the  welfare  of  the 
country,  when  he  casually  observed  that  he  owned  twelve 
hundred  acres  of  the  finest  river  bottom  land  in  Ohio,  richly 
worth  fifty  dollars  per  acre,  yet  which  he  could  find  nobody 
to  purchase  and  improve  because  the  floating  capital  of  the 
country  was  all  attracted  to  and  locked  up  in  Eastern 
factories.  It  seemed  to  me,  and  I  could  not  help  telling  him, 
that  the  obstacle  and  the  wrong  in  the  case  was  his  attempt 
ing  to  exact  fifty  dollars  per  acre  for  land  to  which  nothing 
had  been  done  except  possibly  to  divest  it  of  some  of  its 
most  valuable  timber  since  it  was  purchased  of  the  Nation  for 
a  dollar  and  a  quarter  per  acre.  Yet  the  Great  West  is 
covered  with  such  reservations,  to  the  serious  obstruction  of 
settlements  and  detriment  of  settlers.  One  or  two  such 
may  deprive  a  school  district  of  any  fit  school  for  twenty 
years ;  three  or  four  will  keep  a  township  destitute  of  the 
preaching  of  the  gospel,  miserably  provided  with  roads  and 
bridges,  scantily  supplied  with  mechanics  and  artisans.  Such 
a  reservation  is  by  no  means  a  mere  blank  —  it  is  a  positive 
blight  and  discouragement.  It  has  usually  been  selected  as 
soon  as  the  lands  of  that  district  were  offered  for  sale,  and 
comprises  some  of  the  very  best  in  its  vicinity.  Often  two 
long  prairies,  each  twenty  or  thirty  miles  wide,  are  separated 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  25 

by  a  small  river  or  mill-stream  with  a  fringe  of  timber  half  a 
mile  wide.  Speculation  early  fastens  its  grasp  upon  this 
belt  of  timber,  including  all  the  water-power,  fencing  and 
fuel  of  one  or  more  counties.  Soon  settlers  begin  to  arrive, 
and  find  good  prairie  abundant  and  likely  to  remain  so  at 
the  Government  price,  ten  York  shillings  per  acre.  But 
this  is  utterly  unavailable,  uninhabitable,  without  timber  and 
water,  which  can  only  be  had  by  paying  the  speculators  their 
ten  to  twenty  dollars  per  acre,  with  a  thousand  or  two  dol 
lars  for  a  mill-site,  which  must  ultimately  be  had  at  whatever 
price.  There  are  other  sections  wherein  Speculation  kindly 
disposes  of  the  land  to  settlers  who  have  no  money,  only  asking 
a  liberal  share  of  the  first  four  or  five  crops  in  payment.  Mil 
lions  of  acres  are  now  occupied  by  the  preemption  claimants, 
under  articles  binding  the  speculators  who  have  bid  them  oft' 
at  the  Government  sales  to  convey  them  to  the  occupants 
upon  the  payment  of  the  principal  cost  with  twenty-five  to 
fifty  per  cent,  interest.  It  is  a  moderate  estimate  that  every 
dollar  put  into  the  Treasury  by  public  land-sales  has  taken 
three  to  four  dollars  from  the  pockets  of  the  actual  settler 
and  cultivator. 

Still,  the  remedy  required  is  not  so  much  the  substitution 
of  gift  for  sale  as  the  limitation  of  the  quantity  which  one 
man  may  acquire.  Reduce  the  Government  price  to  ten 
cents  per  acre,  and  you  but  facilitate  the  operations  of 
Monopoly,  and  hasten  the  day  when  the  great  mass  shall  be 
beggars  for  the  privilege  of  cultivating  God's  earth,  and 
general  scarcity  of  employment  shall  lead  surely  to  penury 
of  reward  and  scantiness  of  food.  But  establish  the  principle 
that  no  man  shall  acquire  but  a  limited  area  of  the  land  yet: 
public,  and  whether  that  land  be  still  sold  at  a  moderate 
price  or  allotted  for  the  bare  cost  of  survey  and  transfer  to 
the  settler,  the  Nation's  chief  peril  will  have  been  averted, 
and  a  broad  and  strong  foundation  laid  for  ihe  edifice  of 
Social  Justice  and  Industrial  Emancipation. 
3 


20  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

I  urge  the  application  of  this  salutary,  vital  principle  first 
to  the  Public  Lands,  because  there  it  can  not  be  parried  by 
any  pretence  than  its  adoption  will  interfere  with  Vested 
Rights.  He  who  does  not  choose  to  settle  on  Public  Lands 
on  such  terms  as  the  Nation  shall  see  fit  to  impose  has  all 
the  world  before  him;  he  may  hire  or  work  on  shares  or  buy 
wherever  else  he  pleases.  If  he  does  see  fit  to  remove  from 
lands  made  private  to  those  yet  public,  he  can  not  reasonably 
object  to  the  conditions  which  the  Public  Will  shall  impose. 
He  must  assent  to  them  and  prepare  to  obey  them  in  good 
faith.  But»in  truth  there  is  not  a  township  so  old  nor  so 
new  that  the  principle  of  Land  Limitation  therein  would  not 
prove  a  great  blessing  to  its  whole  people.  Into  the  midst 
of  a  sluggish  or  careless  community  is  born  a  stirring  and 
sharp-dealing  man,  possessed  by  the  twin  demons  Avarice 
and  Ambition.  He  betakes  himself  to  Trade  or  Speculation, 
or  Usury  ;  or  possibly  he  makes  large  annual  gains  by  sheer 
industry,  sharp  bargains,  and  good  management.  The  spirit 
of  territorial  aggrandizement  soon  awakes  within  him ;  he  finds 
his  patrimony  too  narrow  to  afford  scope  for  his  energies. 
And  the  same  Providence  which  gave  being  to  foxes  ordain 
ed  geese  also.  Here  a  family  has  encountered  a  succession 
of  calamities,  finding  their  climax  in  the  death  of  its  head  ; 
heavy  debts  hang  over  it,  and  the  Homestead  must  be  sacri 
ficed  just  when  it  has  become  vitally  necessary  to  save  the 
mother  and  her  babes  from  dispersion  and  servitude.  The 
next  farm  is  held  by  a  drunkard* or  prodigal,  and  this  is  soon 
brought  to  the  hammer.  In  the  next  house  lives  a  foolish 
father  and  mother,  whose  darling  son  must  be  sent  to  Col 
lege,  which  in  the  end  sends  them  to  the  Poor-House.  All 
these,  and  more,  fall  successively  into  the  hands  of  the  gen 
eral  devourer  of  widows'  houses,  who  goes  on  expanding 
and  amassing  till  death  stops  him.  In  the  course  of  one  or 
two  generations,  all  will  very  probably  be  dissipated,  but  the 
evil  already  done  is  not  thereby  remedied.  The  displaced 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  27 

families  are  very  rarely  restored.  A  new  accumulator  starts 
up,  perhaps  in  the  same  school  district,  perhaps  in  the  next; 
and  runs  the  old  race  over  again.  Thus  the  children  of  the 
poor  and  the  prodigal  are  constantly  falling  into  homelessness, 
and  more  generally  as  the  community  grows 'older ;  while 
the  ability  and  energy  which,  properly  directed,  would  have 
made  one  farm  a  model  and  a  spur  to  the  whole  township  — 
which  could  hardly  have  failed  to  do  this  if  the  law  had  not 
proffered  to  the  possessor  the  fatal  facility  of  adding  broad 
acres  to  a  domain  already  too  extensive  —  are  worse  than 
wasted  in  acquiring  the  farms  of  others  instead  of  rendering 
fruitful  and  beauteous  his  own.  One  hundred  acres  might 
have  been  rendered  as  valuable  and  as  productive  as  the 
many  hundreds  now  are,  and  been  made  to  give  employment 
to  as  much  Labor ;  but  the  larger  territory  sounds  louder 
in  the  public  ear,  and  to  own  the  most  land  of  any  man  in 
the  County  is,  unfortunately,  a  greater  distinction  than  to 
work  a  moderate  farm  the  best.  All  this  must  be  amended, 
and  it  will  be.»-  Land  Reform  is  the  natural  and  sure  basis 
of  all  Social  and  Industrial  Melioration. 

Next  in  order  to  Land  Reform  stands  the  question  of 
Labor  Reform,  or  the  regulation  of  the  hours  of  daily  manual 
toil.  I  am  -'not  aware  that  any  noted  writer  on  Social 
Economy,  or  on  the  sanitary  and  moral  condition  of  the 
Laboring  Classes,  has  failed  to  condemn  the  exaction  of 
twelve  to  thirteen  hours'  labor  per  day  as  excessive  and  per 
nicious —  an  offence  against  general  well-being,  and  even 
against  the  self-interest  of  the  Employers.  One*  of  the  most 
eminent  British  manufacturers  of  the  last  generation,  who 
retired  from  business  twenty  years  ac;o  with  a  large  fortune, 
the  fruit  of  thirty  years'  faithful  assiduity  and  exertion,  and 
who  still  lives  to  enjoy  the  competence  he  so  fairly  won,  in 
forms  me  that  he  for  twenty  years  neither  exacted  nor 

*  Robert  Owen. 


28  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

allowed  more  than  ten  hours'  labor  per  day  of  any  one  in 
his  employment,  and  that  he  prospered  as  well  and  amassed 
property  quite  as  fast  as  any  of  his  competitors  or  rivals,  who 
kept  their  mills  running  from  twelve  to  sixteen  hours  per  day. 
It  is  his  deliberate  judgment  that  even  less  than  ten  hours 
per  day  will  ultimately  be  found  better  for  all  parties.-  In 
Scotland,  it  is  the  rule  in  some  counties  to  work  twelve 
hours  per  day  at  Farming,  in  others  but  ten ;  and  impartial 
testimony  establishes  the  fact  that  the  shorter  term  is  fully 
as  effective  as  the  longer.  But  I  do  not  propose  here  to 
discuss,  much  less  to  settle,  the  precise  number  of  hours 
which  should  be  held  as  constituting  a  usual  or  regular  day's 
work.  That  question  will  properly  come  up  after  we  have 
settled  the  prior  and  more  important  point  that  there  shall  be 
some  definite  and  uniform  meaning  to  the  term  '  day's  work,' 
so  that  an  agreement  to  work  a  month  or  week  shall  imply 
some  precise  and  well-known  term,  and  not  remain  subject 
to  be  stretched  or  contracted  at  the  mere  pleasure,  con 
venience,  or  fancied  interest  of  one  of  the  parties.  This  is 
a  Reform  which  seems  to  me  not  only  important  but  in 
evitable.  It  would  be  as  sensible  and  just  to  prescribe  that 
a  pound  of  meat,  of  sugar,  or  of  coffee,  should  consist  of  just 
so  many  ounces  as  the  buyer  should  see  fit,  after  the  price 
had  been  settled,  to  exact,  or  that  a  bushel  of  grain  should 
consist  of  an  indefinite  number  of  quarts,  as  that  a  day's 
work  should  consist  of  ten,  eleven,  twelve,  or  thirteen  hours' 
faithful  labor,  just  as  the  purchaser  of  that  labor  should  think 
proper  to  require.  Labor  in  our  day  has  become  so  ex 
tensively  a  commodity  —  a  marketable  product,  like  cheese 
or  chocolate  —  that  it  is  most  essential  to  all  fair  dealing  that 
it  be  measured  as  definitely  and  equally  as  possible.  And, 
when  it  is  settled  that  it  shall  be  so  measured,  I  understand 
it  to  be  the  uniform  testimony  of  impartial  men  who  have  in 
vestigated  the  subject,  that,  at  least  in  all  employments  not 
liable  to  interruption  by  the  elements,  the  number  of  hours 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  29 

constituting  a  day's  work  must  be  reduced  as  well  as  defined 
and  equalized,  so  as  to  afford  opportunity  not  merely  for  de 
liberate  meals  and  ample  rest,  but  for  study,  reading,  and 
relaxation,  also.  Man  was  not  made  merely  to  eat,  to  work, 
to  sleep.  He  has  faculties  which  such  a  routine  does  not 
develop  —  wants  and  aspirations  which  it  does  not  satisfy. 
Especially  where  the  fixed  attention  of  the  mind  as  well  as 
a  constrained  attitude  of  the  body  is  exacted  by  the  nature 
of  his  labor,  and  where  that  labor  is  continued  from  day  to 
day,  week  in  and  week  out,  without  interruption  by  storm 
or  frost,  it  seems  manifest  that  the  regulation  of  the  hours  of 
labor  should  respect  the  mental  no  less  than  the  physical 
demands  of  his  nature,  and  that  the  day's  toil  should  be 
broken  off  before  the  body  has  been  so  wearied  and  ex 
hausted  as  to  leave  no  strength  nor  spirit  for  mental  improve 
ment  or  exertion.  Such  I  understand  to  be  the  essence  of 
the  demand  for  a  general  Reform  in  the  hours  and  con 
ditions  of  Labor. 

I  am  encouraged  to  hope  for  an  early  and  favorable  action 
on  this  subject  by  recent  action  in  England.  It  is  sometimes 
made  a  reproach  to  our  influential  and  wealthy  class  that  they 
pattern  closely  after  England,  and  copy  her  fashions,  her 
laws,  habits,  and  thoughts,  with  servile  alacrity.  I  will  not 
here  stop  to  consider  how  far  this  ought  to  be  esteemed  a 
reproach  if  it  were  admitted  to  be  a  truth.  It  seems  to  me 
that  we  might  learn  much  from  that  same  England,  both  by 
way  of  example  and  of  warning.  Be  this  as  it  may,  the  fact 
that  the  British  Parliament  has  passed  a  law  decreeing  a  re 
duction  of  the  Hours  of  Factory  Labor  to  eleven,  and  after 
one  year  to  ten  per  day,  will  doubtless  do  much  to  pave  the 
way  for  and  hasten  the  adoption  of  some  kindred  measure 
here.  Such  action  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic  will  be 
effectual  not  merely  as  an  example,  but  by  removing  the 
dangers,  real  or  fancied,  of  unequal  Foreign  competition,  in 
case  of  a  reduction  of  hours  on  this  side.  And  I  may  fairly 
3* 


30  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

presume  that  the  most  ferocious  hater  of  British  laws  and  pre 
cedents  will  make  little  objection  to  our  imitating  this. 

Yet  a  Limitation  of  the  Hours  of  Labor  seems  to  me  a 
secondary  though  most  important  Reform.  So  long  as  un 
employed  Labor  crowds  the  market  and  the  street,  eagerly 
chaffering  and  underbidding  for  opportunity  to  earn  a  bare 
subsistence,  I  fear  any  stringent  legislation  on  this  point 
could  not  be  enforced.  Indeed,  the  difficulties  environing 
the  subject  are  by  no  means  few  nor  trivial.  The  evil  re 
sembles  in  character  the  '  compound  fracture'  of  the  physical 
man.  We  can  all  agree  at  the  outset  that  ten  hours'  faithful, 
skillful  labor  per  day  ought  to  enable  any  man  to  support  his 
family  comfortably  and  respectably.  But  here  are  men 
whose  personal  burdens  are  excessive — who  owe  debts  in 
curred  by  past  sickness  or  misfortune  in  business ;  who  have 
sick  or  disabled  relatives  cast  upon  their  hands,  and  who 
choose  to  labor  excessively  in  order  to  meet  manfully  the  de 
mands  made  upon  them.  Can  the  law  wisely  interfere  to  say 
that  such  men  shall  not  work  twelve  or  fourteen  hours  if 
they  choose  ?  Again  :  a  dam  gives  way,  the  machinery  of  a 
mill  breaks,  and  five  hundred  workers  must  stand  idle  and 
incur  expense  until  a  few  can  make  all  right  again.  Would 
it  be  wise  and  just  to  prescribe  that  these  few  shall  be  in 
flexibly  restricted  to  ten  hours'  labor  per  day  ?  These 
instances  might  be  multiplied,  but  enough.  Since  it  is  con 
fessedly  impolitic  and  indeed  impossible  to  fix  by  law  the 
price  of  any  service  or  commodity,  it  is  not  without  reason 
that  some  have  honestly  doubted  that  any  law  prescribing 
arbitrarily  the  boundaries  of  a  day's  work  would  be  effective 
or  useful.  The  end  aimed  at  is  at  last  to  be  reached,  in  my 
judgment,  from  the  other  side — by  such  a  change  in  the 
Social  Condition  of  the  mass  of  Laborers  and  in  their  relation 
to  the  Soil,  as  will  leave  them  really  free  to  accept  an  offer 
of  employment,  in  view  of  all  its  conditions,  or  decline  it. 
Secure  to  them  this,  and  they  will  enforce  a  suitable  limitation 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  31 

of  the  Hours  of  Labor  without  the  aid  of  positive,  peremptory 
statutes ;  but  so  long  as  this  is  not,  I  apprehend  that  no  law 
can  surely  and  uniformly  accomplish  the  desired  end. 

But,  now  that  we  have  considered  the  natural  difficulties 
and  limitations  to  be  encountered,  I  think  we  are  prepared 
to  state  clearly  what  the  law  can  and  may  do  in  the  premises. 
All  must  allow  that  there  should  be  some  definite  limit  to  an 
ordinary  day's  work,  and  that  that  limit  should  not  be  fixed 
and  changed  as  the  mere  pleasure  or  interest  of  the  Employ 
ing  Class  shall  dictate.  I  intend  by  this  no  reflection  on  the 
character  of  that  Class.  That  would  ill  become  me,  since  to 
that  Class  I  at  present  belong.  I  do  not  believe  it  less  wise, 
humane,  or  considerate,  in  the  average,  than  the  Employed, 
nor  less  likely  to  do  right  where  the  interests  of  the  two  may 
seem  to  conflict.  But  the  sound  general  rule  that  no  man 
is  a  proper  judge  in  his  own  case  applies  here  as  well  as 
elsewhere.  There  should  always  be  two  parties  to  a  bargain, 
and  to  every  part  of  it,  otherwise  it  is  apt  to  prove  a  hard 
one.  And  while  I  hold  that  the  State  can  not  properly  pre 
scribe  that  no  man  shall  in  any  case  work  more  for  another 
than  ten  hours  in  any  one  day  —  still  less  can  it  in  my  view, 
make  one  law  for  Corporations  and  another  for  Individuals 
—  it  may  yet,  as  the  general  Protector  of  the  Weak  against 
the  Strong,  do  much,  and  ought  to  do  much,  to  mitigate  the 
evils  of  excessive  hours  of  daily  toil.  The  action  I  would 
recommend,  and  which  in  one  State*  has  already  in  part  re 
ceived  the  sanction  of  the  Legislature,  is  substantially  as 
follows  : 

1.  An  act  forbidding  absolutely  the  employment  of 
children  or  minors,  whether  Apprentices  or  Hired,  for  more 
than  ten  hours  per  day.  The  State  has  a  right  to  see,  and 
ought  to  see,  that  the  frames  of  the  rising  generations  are  not 
shattered  nor  their  constitutions  undermined  by  excessive 
labor.  She  should  do  this  for  her  own  sake  as  well  as 

*  New  Hampshire. 


HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Humanity's.  She  has  a  vital  interest  in  the  strength  and 
vigor  of  those  who  are  to  be  her  future  fathers  and  mothers, 
her  defenders  in  war,  her  cultivators  and  artisans  in  peace. 
She  may  safely  make  this  limitation  imperative,  since  for 
whatever  service  it  may  be  necessary  to  employ  labor  for  a 
longer  term  per  day  there  will  always  be  found  an  abundance 
of  adults,  if  proper  inducements  are  offered. 

2.  A  simply  declaratory  act  that  in  all  cases  where  no 
other  term  is  specified,  the  Law  shall  presume 'and  decide 
that  an  agreement  to  work  a  week,  a  month,  a  year,  or  any 
other  term,  implies  ten  hours'  faithful  work  on  each  secular 
day,  and  no  more.  It  may  be  expedient  to  vary  this  term  in 
certain  out-door  employments,  especially  Farming,  making  it 
nine  hours  between  October  and  March,  and  eleven  between 
April  and  September,  the  four  months  named  standing  at 
ten  hours ;  but  this  would  be  in  perfect  consistency  with  the 
general  principle  that  ten  hours  should  constitute  a  legal 
day's  work,  wherever  the  parties,  being  responsible  and  in 
dependent  adults,  do  not  see  fit  to  vary  this  by  express 
agreement.  The  moral  effect  of  such  an  act,  in  inducing 
a  very  general  conformity  to  its  dictates,  would  be  great, 
and  I  can  not  believe  that  much  hired  labor  would  ultimately 
be  performed  otherwise  than  in  accordance  with  the  rule  it 
prescribed,  save  in  pressing  emergencies. 

To  the  ardent  and  dogmatic  Reformer,  who  holds  the 
Ten-Hour  Rule  the  chief  and  sufficient  means  for  the 
Emancipation  of  Labor  from  thraldom  and  depression,  this 
suggestion  will  seem  tame  and  halting  ;  but  I  confidently 
believe  such  an  act  as  it  contemplates  would  effect  more 
enduring  good  than  would  one  that  took  the  more  arbitrary 
and  inflexible  form.  Yet  I  would  see  with  pleasure  the  two 
tried  side  by  side,  in  sister  States,  by  way  of  experiment. 

;  — A  Limitation  of  the  Hours  of  Labor,  once  accomplished, 
will  be  valuable  mainly  for  the  Opportunity  it  proffers — the 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  33 

prospect  it  opens.  '  The  end  is  not  yet' — very  far  from  it. 
If  the  worker,  released  from  excessive  drudgery  in  the  mill 
or  the  shop,  shall  misimprove  his  new-found  leisure  in  the 
groggery,  the  cigar-store,  the  gambling  den,  or  some  other 
haunt  of  vileness,  it  were  well  for  him  if  he  had  remained  a 
patient,  abject  drudge  for  life.  And  herein  is  the  discour 
agement  of  many  from  all  effort  to  improve  the  physical  and 
temporal  condition  of  the  less  fortunate  Laboring  Class. 
They  can  only  see  that  more  wages  give  more  liquor,  and 
more  leisure  incites  to  more  dissipation.  Alas  !  let  us  con 
fess  in  deep  humility  and  sorrow  that  there  is  a  deplorable 
truth  at  the  bottom  of  this.  Yet  no  —  I  think  it  is  not  at  the 
bottom,  but  nearer  the  surface.  Fearfully  true  it  is  that  many 
of  those  whose  lives  are  mechanical  merely — whose  days 
are  consecrated  to  drudgery,  and  the  gloom  of  whose  nar 
row  tenements  is  rarely  softened  by  the  sun  of  Hope  —  do 
usually  spend  their  hours  snatched  from  toil  in  degrading, 
brutalizing  sensualities,  so  as  to  give  plausibility  to  the  con 
clusion  that  they  would  be  better  if  they  had  no  leisure  at 
all  and  no  resources  beyond  the  means  of  supplying  the 
barest  necessaries  of  life.  But  the  logic  which  thence  infers 
that  the  victim  of  incessant  toil  and  meager  recompense 
ought  ever  to  remain  such  is  that  which  exalts  Slavery  into 
a  Divine  and  beneficent  institution,  and  proves  War  a  gen 
eral  blessing  by  demonstrating  the  average  worthlessness 
or  worse  of  those  it  employs  and  consumes.  We  must  stop 
this  arguing  from  existing  evils  in  support  of  the  abuses  and 
wrongs  which  created  them.  Let  us  give  Human  Nature  a 
fair  trial,  and  see  if  it  utterly  lack  sense  as  well  as  any 
glimmering  of  virtue,  before  we  pronounce  it  a  hopeless 
failure,  to  be  managed  only  with  the  strait-jacket  and  the 
halter.  Let  us  have  a  fair  and  full  trial  of  a  Laboring  Class 
thoroughly  educated,  not  overworked,  fairly  remunerated, 
with  ample  leisure,  and  adequate  opportunities  for  Social, 
Moral,  and  Intellectual  culture  and  enjoyment,  and  then,  if 


34  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

the  hard-handed  multitude  shall  still  persist  in  squandering 
their  leisure  and  their  means  in  riot  and  dissipation,  we  must 
sadly,  reluctantly,  but  utterly,  abandon  all  hope  of  a  better 
day  coming  for  the  Toiling  Millions,  and  leave  them  to  the 
tender  mercies  of  the  miser,  the  forestaller,  the  pawnbroker, 
the  grog-seller,  as  fair  game.  Whether  the  land-pirate  strip 
the  wreck  or  the  sea  swallow  it,  what  matter  ?  But  I  can  not 
doubt  that  a  better  Social  condition,  enlarged  opportunities 
of  good,  an  atmosphere  of  Humanity  and  Hope,  would  insure 
a  nobler  and  truer  Character,  and  that  the  dens  of  dissipation 
will  cease  to  lure  those  whom  a  proper  Education  has  quali 
fied,  and  whom  excessive  Toil  has  not  disqualified,  for  the 
improvement  of  Liberty  and  Leisure.  At  all  events,  the 
momentous  consequences  depending  should  impel  a  speedy 
trial  of  the  experiment,  and  insure  a  fair  trial. 

I  should  be  most  unfaithful  to  my  own  convictions,  and 
leave  room  for  false  inferences  and  misstatements  which  I 
claim  the  right  here  to  repel,  if  I  omitted  to  rank  War  among 
the  scourges  which  a  pure  Christianity,  a  true  Civilization, 
must  banish  from  off  the  face  of  the  earth,  before  the  Eman 
cipation  of  Labor  from  depressing  want  and  unmerited  suf 
fering  can  be  permanently  effected.  War,  indeed,  elevates 
as  well  as  depresses,  expands  as  well  as  crushes  ;  but  those 
refreshed  and  gladdened  by  its  golden  showers  are  never  the 
humble  workers — the  men  whose  bread  is  moistened  by  their 
own  daily  sweat,  and  won  by  the  peaceful  might  of  sturdy 
sinews  —  for  these,  War  has  showers  of  grape  and  canister 
only,  not  of  eagles  and  doubloons.  Their  bodies  serve 
passably  to  fill  trenches,  shrouded  in  their  own  blood — but 
their  names  are  rarely  deemed  good  enough  to  fill  half  a  line 
in  the  most  inflated  and  deceitful  bulletin.  War  destroys  in 
a  day  the  fruits  of  many  years'  peaceful  effort,  fills  the  world 
with  destitute  cripples,  widows  and  orphans  ;  it  ravages  prov 
inces  to  fertilize  a  single  battle-field,  and  leaves  barbarism 
instead  of  refinement,  idleness  in  place  of  industry,  weeds  in 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  35 

place  of  gardens  ;  blood,  ashes,  and  tears,  instead  of  fertility, 
beauty,  and  joy.  Not  till  the  Laboring  Millions  shall  have 
become  wise  enough  to  loathe  the  glory  which  wreathes  the 
brow  of  Carnage,  and  admire  one  Franklin  or  Clarkson 
more  than  twenty  Napoleons  or  Wellingtons,  may  we  reason 
ably  look  for  the  Elevation  of  Labor  to  its  proper  condition 
and  dignity.  Hopeless  is  the  degradation  of  the  slave  who 
idolizes  the  chains  and  trappings  which  hold  him  in  perpet 
ual  bondage. 

JSo  on  a  kindred  though  apparently  opposite  point.  To 
me  it  seems  indispensable  to  the  just  recompense,  steady 
employment  and  sure  elevation  of  Labor,  that  the  Industry 
of  each  community  or  People  be  rendered  as  various  and 
diverse  as  is  consistent  with  efficiency  in  production — that 
everywhere  Agriculture,  Manufactures,  Mechanic  Arts,  &c., 
should  intermingle  and  blend  with  each  other,  so  as  to  afford 
employment  for  the  greatest  possible  diversity  of  tastes  and 
capacities  in  regard  to  industrial  pursuits.  You  may  agree 
with  me  that  it  is  the  proper  duty  of  Government  to  strive  for 
and  as  far  as  possible  secure  such  diversity,  by  fostering  and 
upholding  the  introduction  of  such  departments  of  Useful 
Labor  as  are  yet  unestablished  or  in  their  infancy  —  or  you 
may  incline  to  the  opposite  theory,  that  this  matter  will  bet 
ter  take  care  of  itself,  and  that  Government  can  not  act; 
more  wisely,  beneficently,  than  to  let  it  entirely  alone.  I 
will  not  here  discuss  the  relative  soundness  of  these  anta"-- 

o 

onist  theories  :  but  I  insist  that  the  condition  of  the  Labor 
ing  Class  can  never  be  independent  and  comfortable  while  a 
Nation  buys  its  bread,  or  its  clothing,  its  wares  or  its  fabrics, 
mainly  from  abroad.  I  know  well  that  National  landmarks 
are,  in  the  eye  of  Philanthropy,  as  if  they  were  not :  I  look 
only  to  the  inevitable  consequences  of  carrying  Grain  across 
halt  a  continent  and  an  ocean,  and  bringing  back  Cloths  in 
return  ;  and  I  say  that  this  is,  in  general,  at  deadly  war  with 
the  permanent  interests  of  Labor,  which  unerringly  demand 


30  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

that  the  exchanges  of  products  should  be  in  the  main  as 
direct  and  simple  as  possible,  and  as  nearly  as  may  be  be 
tween  producer  and  produced,  with  but  one  or  two  inter 
mediates  at  most.  So  long  as  the  Grain  grown  in  the  great 
Valley  of  the  Mississippi  is  in  good  part  exchanged  for  the 
Cloths  of  England,  the  Linens  of  Ireland,  the  silks  and  wines 
of  France,  the  glass,  the  toys,  the  knick-knacks  of  Germany 
—  all  which,  if  needed,  might  as  well  be  produced  in  our 
own  country  as  elsewhere  —  so  long  will  the  bulk  of  Amer 
ican  Labor  be  deprived  of  more  than  half  its  just  reward 
through  the  depression  of  its  great  staples  at  the  point  of  pro 
duction  and  the  exactions  of  a  superfluous  Traffic.  At  this 
moment,*  Corn  sells  abundantly  for  twenty  cents  per  bushel 
in  the  most  productive  sections  of  our  Great  West,  though 
famished  Ireland  eagerly  pays  for  it  two  dollars  per  bushel ; 
and  so  with  other  things.  The  shipper  charges  twice  to 
thrice  as  much  for  conveying  each  bushel  from  New  York  to 
Liverpool  as  the  farmer  receives  for  growing  it.  The  ulti 
mate  remedy  for  this  —  effect  it  as  you  will  —  is  the  natural 
ization  of  the  arts,  and  if  need  be  the  artisans,  of  the  Old 
World  along-side  of  the  fertile  prairies  of  our  boundless 
West,  thereby  securing  them  twice  as  much  grain  for  the 
product  of  each  day's  labor  as  they  now  receive,  while 
benefiting  in  equal  measure  our  farmers,  and  diverting  the 
non-productive  labor  now  employed  in  needless  transporta 
tion  into  the  channels  of  productive  Industry.  Call  this,  if 
you  please,  a  digression — to  me  it  seems  unavoidable  if 
misapprehensions  are  to  be  prevented.  I  proceed  with  my 
general  statement. 

Unquestionably  the  Emancipation  of  Labor  is  to  be 
effected  through  or  in  conjunction  with  the  mental  and  moral 
improvement  of  the  Laboring  Class.  So  far,  all  are  of  one 
mind.  But  whoever  argues  thence  that  nothing  is  to  be 
done,  nor  even  attempted,  in  the  way  of  physical  or  circum- 

*  December,  1R4G. 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  37 

stantial  melioration,  until  the  Laboring  Class  shall  have 
wrought  out  its  own  thorough  spiritual  development  and 
moral  renovation,  might  as  well  declare  himself  a  champion 
of  the  Slave-Trade  at  once.  The  internal  and  external 
renovation  are  each  necessary  to  the  completeness  of  the 
other.  Merely  lightening  his  tasks  and  enlarging  his  com 
forts  will  not  raise  a  groveling,  sensual,  ignorant  boor  to  the 
dignity  of  true  manhood  ;  but  no  more  can  just  and  lumin 
ous  ideas  of  his  own  nature,  relations,  duties,  and  destiny,  be 
expected  often  to  irradiate  the  mind  of  one  doomed  to  a  life 
of  abject  drudgery,  penury,  and  privation.  "  Tom,"  said  a 
Colonel  on  the  Rio  Grande  to  one  of  his  command,  "  how 
can  so  brave  and  good  a  soldier  as  you  are  so  demean  him 
self  as  to  get  drunk  at  every  opportunity  ?"  — "  Colonel  !" 
replied  the  private,  "  how  can  you  expect  all  the  virtues 
that  adorn  the  human  character  for  seven  dollars  a  month  V" 
The  answer,  however  faulty  in  morals,  involves  a  grave 
truth.  Self-respect  is  the  shield  of  Virtue  ;  Comfort  and 
Hope  are  the  hostages  we  proffer  the  world  for  our  good 
behavior  in  it ;  take  these  away,  and  Temptation  is  left 
without  counteracting  force  or  influence.  '  Without  hope 
and  without  God  in  the  world,'  says  an  inspired  Apostle  ; 
let  not  the  sequence  or  its  significance  be  forgotten.  Show 
me  a  community,  a  class,  a  calling,  wherein  poverty,  dis 
comfort,  and  excessive,  unrewarded  toil  have  come  to  be 
regarded  as  an  inexorable  destiny,  and  I  will  tell  you  that 
there  the  laws  of  God  and  man.  are  sullenly  defied  or  stupidly 
disregarded. 

The  Industrial  Education  of  the  Poor  is  a  matter  of  the 
very  highest  and  most  pressing  Social  concern.  Here  are 
hundreds  on  every  side  of*us  toiling  their  lives  out  for  some 
beggarly  four  to  six  shillings  per  day,  and  barely  existing  in 
want  and  wretchedness  thereon,  when  others,  intrinsically  no 
wiser  and  better  than  they,  earn  thrice  as  much,  and  live  in 
ease  and  comfort.  This  immense  disparity  has  its  origin  in 
4 


38  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

the  slight  and  unregarded  circumstance  that  the  one  class 
were  in  youth  so  fortunate  or  so  provident  as  to  be  enabled 
to  acquire  trades  or  callings  in  which  labor  is  well  rewarded, 
while  the  others  have  grown  up  at  random,  doing  what  came 
handiest,  or  rather  that  which  in  the  general  scramble  was 
left  to  them ;  and  now  they  are  qualified  only  for  such  em 
ployment  as  none  beside  them  will  take.  Nothing  can  be 
more  culpably  thoughtless  in  a  parent  than  to  let  his  son  or 
daughter  grow  up  unfitted  for  some  sphere  of  decided  and 
fairly-rewarded  usefulness.  A  good  trade  is  an  estate  out 
of  which  the  most  confiding  can  not  be  swindled,  and  which 
is  almost  beyond  the  reach  of  adverse  fortune. 

But  it  is  not  merely  desirable  that  each  child  should  be 
trained  to  decided  efficiency  in  some  branch  of  Industry  — 
it  is  essential  also  that  each  should  be  incited  to  a  constant 
exertion  of  all  his  faculties  in  devising  and  perfecting  im 
provements  therein.  The  son  should  not  be  satisfied  with 
doing  as  well  as  his  father  did — he  should  begin  there, 
resolved  to  do  better  and  better.  Herein  is  the  radical  dif 
ference  between  Free  and  Slave  Labor,  which  is  already 
rendering  Slavery  unprofitable,  and  is  destined  to  blot  it  out 
of  existence.  Slavery  controls  the  sinews  and  the  limbs 
only ;  the  brain  and  the  will  are  beyond  its  power.  The 
world  has  as  yet  hardly  known  what  Free  Labor  is  —  it  has 
had  few  or  no  full  and  fair  specimens  of  it,  such  as  it 
must  and  shall  have.  And  it  seems  to  me  that  one  great 
means  toward  the  promotion  of  a  more  intellectual  and  effi 
cient  Laboring  Class  than  the  world  has  yet  seen  is  the 
adoption  of  a  law  of  Proportion  or  rateable  dividend  to  Cap 
ital  and  Labor  in  place  of  the  present  system  of  fixed  and 
arbitrary  wages.  I  know  that  no  such  change  can  be  effected 
suddenly,  but  I  believe  some  approximation  might  imme 
diately  be  made  to  it  with  decided  benefit  to  all.  Let  us 
suppose,  for  instance,  that  a  manufacturing  company,  in 
addition  to  the  payment  of  the  usual  wages,  were  to  set  apart 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  39 

a  small  proportion  of  its  net  earnings  —  say  five  or  ten  per 
cent,  to  begin  with  —  to  be  divided  among  all  its  permanent 
workmen  on  some  predetermined  scale  at  the  close  and  set 
tlement  of  each  year's  business.  Does  any  man  believe  that 
such  company  would  be  a  cent  the  poorer  for  this,  in  view 
of  all  the  probable  consequences  ?  I  am  confident  it  would 
be  richer ;  and  that  the  dividend  of  profits  to  Labor  would, 
after  a  few  years,  be  increased,  to  the  signal  advantage  of  all 
parties.  And  the  effect  of  this  system  upon  the  industry, 
fidelity,  and  skill  of  the  workmen,  it  would  hardly  be  possible 
to  exaggerate. 

The  difficulties  which  impede  any  plan  of  Radical  and 
thorough  Reform  are  never  slight,  and  can  not  be  surmounted 
at  a  breath.  And,  unfortunately,  when  our  machinery  fails 
to  work  out  the  desired  result,  we  are  usually  too  imperfectly 
acquainted  with  the  subject  of  our  high  emprise  to  detect  the 
real  cause  of  our  disappointment.  The  shortness  of  vision 
which  caused  our  failure  disables  us  for  correcting  it.  Here 
a  fond  father  of  small  intellectual  attainment,  having  been 
often  rendered  painfully  conscious  of  his  own  deficiencies, 
resolves  to  lavish  his  hard-earned  coin  to  give  his  son  the 
very  best — that  is,  the  most  expensive  —  Education.  He 
pushes  him  sturdily  through  school,  academy,  and  university, 
qualifies  him  (so  far  as  money  can)  for  a  profession  ;  and 
after  all,  young  Hopeful  turns  out  a  blockhead  or  a  black 
guard,  a  drunkard  or  a  swindler.  Forthwith  the  sorely 
disappointed  parent  rushes  to  the  conclusion  that  Education 
is  a  curse  and  a  cheat  —  that  an  honest  man  is  better  with 
out  it  than  with  it.  He  does  not  consider  that  his  failure  has 
proved,  not  that  Education  is  worthless,  but  that  his  son  has 
not  been  educated  —  that  the  training  he  has  paid  so  much  for 
was  not  true  education,  or  that  it  has  been  counteracted  and 
overborne  by  the  false  and  pernicious  teaching  of  the  street, 
the  bar-room,  the  revel  —  very  possibly  of  the  paternal  fire- 


40  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

side  itself.  So  we,  when  we  affirm  that  this  or  that  change 
would  be  beneficial,  can  not  say  that  other  influences  may 
not  take  simultaneous  effect,  and  more  than  counterbalance 
all  the  good  effects  of  this.  Nay,  more  :  That  which  is 
good  in  itself  has  often  fallen  upon  evil  ground,  and  been 
turned  to  evil  by  the  baleful  conjunction.  From  no  partial 
data  can  we  predict  the  formation  of  a  true  and  genial  charac 
ter.  It  must  be  the  product  of  the  whole  circle  of  influences 
surrounding  the  individual  from  birth  to  intellectual  and 
physical  maturity. 

Here,  then,  is  the  basis  of  our  demand  for  that  integral  and 
all-pervading  reform  in  the  circumstances  and  conditions  of 
human  existence  which  we  term  ASSOCIATION,  and  in  which 
rests  my  hope  of  a  better  day  at  hand  for  the  down-trodden 
millions.  Association  affirms  that  every  child  born  into  the 
world  has  a  rightful  claim  upon  the  community  around  him 
for  Subsistence  until  able  to  earn  for  himself;  for  an  Educa 
tion  which  shall  enable  him  to  earn  efficiently  as  well  as 
rightly  to  improve  and  enjoy ;  and  for  Opportunity  to  earn 
at  all  times  by  honest  Industry  steadily  employed  and  justly 
remunerated.  These  it  affirms  as  the  common  Rights  of 
Humanity,  denied  or  subverted  as  to  many  by  our  present 
Social  arrangements,  but  which  Society  ought  to  be  and 
must  be  so  recast  as  to  establish  and  secure.  It  wars  upon 
no  Rights  of  Property,  would  take  nothing  from  the  Rich  to 
bestow  on  the  Poor,  nor  does  it  ask  that  any  shall  abandon 
his  elegant  private  mansion  and  Social  exclusiveness  until 
and  unless  he  shall  see  fit  of  his  own  motion  to  do  so ;  but 
it  does  solicit  the  Wealthy,  the  Refined,  the  Philanthropic, 
the  Religious,  to  invest  something  of  their  pecuniary  means 
in  and  give  something  of  their  countenance  and  good  wishes 
to  all  earnest  efforts  of  the  Laboring  Class  to  emancipate 
and  elevate  themselves.  The  endeavor  will  be  resolutely 
.  and  perseveringly  made,  even  though  Wealth  coldly  frown 
and  Theology  mistakenly  denounce ;  and  it  will  ultimately 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  41 

succeed,  though  a  thousand  failures  should  be  encountered, 
and  the  present  generation  of  its  advocates  be  long  previously 
laid  in  obscure,  unhonored  graves.  To  short-sighted  human 
impatience,  it  now  seems  deplorable  that  Philanthropy  and 
Christianity  do  not  instantly  rally  the  influential  and  the 
affluent  to  our  aid,  and  enable  us  to  demonstrate  the  feasi 
bility  of  a  vast  and  beneficent  Social  Reform  forthwith  ;  but 
I  doubt  not  that  those  who  shall  ultimately  reap  where  we 
have  sown  will  clearly  perceive  that  the  Providential  direc 
tion  was  far  wiser  than  our  haste,  and  that  our  rebuffs  and 
disappointments  were  a  part  of  the  necessary  agencies 
whereby  their  success  was  rendered  perfect  and  enduring. 

Every  manufacturing  village,  every  extensive  manufactory, 
is  a  striking  evidence  of  the  immensely  increased  efficiency 
which  ORGANIZATION  imparts  to  Human  Labor.  A  pop 
ulation  of  Thirty  Thousand,  whose  efforts  are  controlled  and 
directed  by  a  few  superior  minds,  accomplish  results  which 
One  Hundred  Thousand  laboring  separately,  and  thus 
capriciously,  ineffectively,  fail  to  achieve.  In  like  manner, 
we  see  an  ably  commanded  Army  of  Two  Hundred  Thou 
sand  veterans  overrun  and  subdue  with  ease  a  Kingdom  of 
Ten  Millions  of  People,  as  brave  perhaps  and  as  robust  in 
dividually  as  their  conquerors,  but  lacking  unity,  discipline, 
and  competent  leading.  Thus,  too,  the  manufacturing  city 
or  village  usually  accumulates  wealth  faster  than  the  sur 
rounding  country,  its  command  of  natural  forces  being  much 
greater,  and  its  labor  being  far  better  organized  and  therefore 
more  efficient.  Hence  the  appearance  of  one  of  our  manu 
facturing  villages,  standing  like  some  magical  exhalation  on 
a  plat  of  ground  perhaps  familiar  to  my  boyhood  as  a  waste 
of  rock  or  sand,  is  to  me  a  cheering  spectacle,  not  so  much 
for  what  it  actually  is,  as  for  what  it  suggests  and  fore 
shadows.  I  reflect  by  whose  labor  and  toil  all  this  aggre 
gation  of  wealth,  this  immense  capacity  of  producing  more 
wealth,  have  been  called  into  existence  ;  and  I  say,  If  these 
4* 


42  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

rugged  toilers  are  able  to  accomplish  so  much  for  others, 
why  may  they  not  ultimately  do  even  more  for  themselves  ? 
Why  may  not  they  who  cut  the  timber,  and  burn  the  brick, 
and  mix  the  mortar,  and  shape  the  ponderous  machinery, 
ultimately  build  something  like  this  of  their  own  ?  Why 
may  not  their  sisters  and  daughters  in  time  spin  and  weave 
as  the  partners  rather  than  the  hirelings  of  the  mill-owners  ? 
Why  may  we  not  give  to  Labor  a  republican  organization,  as 
we  have,  in  defiance  of  a  croaking  world,  given  one  to 
Government,  so  that  the  workers  shall  freely  choose  their 
own  chiefs  or  overlookers,  regulate  their  own  hours  of  daily 
toil,  and  divide  the  general  product  according  to  a  precon 
certed  scale  whose  sole  end  shall  be  mutual  and  universal 
justice?  Is  Labor  so  intractable,  so  senseless,  that  it  can 
never  run  its  appointed  race  without  a  rider  ?  Let  us  at  least 
hope  not. 

Let  me  rudely  sketch  you  a  village,  township,  school  dis 
trict,  or  whatever  you  may  term  it,  organized  as  we  would 
have  it,  and  as  we  hope  many  ultimately  will  be.  The  basis 
is  a  faith  among  the  associates  or  members  that  they  can  live 
harmoniously  with  and  deal  justly  by  each  other,  treating  any 
casual  imperfections  which  may  be  developed  with  forbear 
ance  and  kindness.  One  hundred  families,  animated  by  this 
spirit,  resolve  to  make  an  attempt  toward  a  more  trustful  and 
genial  life,  and  to  that  end  sell  off  as  they  can  their  immov 
able  possessions  and  resolve  to  seek  a  new  home  together ; 
we  will  say  in  Michigan  or  Wisconsin.  They  send  out  two 
or  three  chosen  leaders,  who,  after  careful  examination, 
select  and  purchase  a  tract  of  one  to  five  thousand  acres,  as 
their  means  will  warrant,  embracing  the  largest  circle  of 
advantages  —  Timber,  Prairie,  Water-Power,  convenience 
for  Transportation,  &c.,  &c.  They  have  carefully  foreseen 
that  proper  building-materials,  including  brick  or  stone,  lime 
and  timber,  are  to  be  obtained  with  facility.  Mills  are 
erected  and  various  branches  of  Manufacturing  established  as 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  43 

fast  as  they  are  needed,  or  as  there  is  any  labor  which  can 
be  spared  for  and  advantageously  employed  therein.     New 
members  who  bid  fair  to  be  desirable  accessions  are  received, 
on  due  probation,  as  fast  as  there   may  be    accommodations 
for  them,   and  so  they  can  be   profitably  employed.     If  a 
blacksmith,  a  carpenter,  a  brickmaker,  or  glazier,  is  wanted, 
he  is  obtained  by  hiring   until,  among  the   wide    circle  of 
friends  or  acquaintances  of  the  members,  one  is  found  who 
would  like  to  unite  his  fortunes  writh  the  Phalanx,  and  who 
is  deemed  a  worthy  associate.     Thus  they  go  on,  producing 
abundant  food  and  other  raw  staples,  steadily  extending  the 
bounds  of  their  cultivated  area,  and  increasing  its  product ; 
enjoying  at  least  the  necessaries  of  life  and  doing  without  the 
superfluities   until   they  are   enabled  to    obtain   them  without 
running  in  debt.      Soon   an   edifice,  intended   for   the   per 
manent  home  of  them  all,  is  commenced  and  finished  piece 
meal  in  the  most  substantial   manner — fireproof  so   nearly 
that  fire  could  not  spread  from  one   section  to  another,  and 
so  planned  that  the  whole  may  be  warmed,  lighted,  supplied 
with  water,  and  cleared  of  refuse  by  arrangements  answering 
as   well  for  a  thousand  persons  as  for   one.      Three  or  four 
large  and  spacious  kitchens,  barns,  granaries  &c.,  £c.,  sup 
plied  with  every  convenience,  would  answer  the  purpose  of 
three   or  four  hundred   under  our  present   economy,  saving 
vast  amounts  now  lost  by  waste,  vermin,  the  elements,  &c. 
&c.     A  tenth  part  of  the  labor  now  required  for  Household 
service,  procuring  Fuel,  £c.,  would  suffice,  while  that  now- 
consumed  in  journeys  to  the  mill,  the  store,  the  blacksmith, 
the  shoemaker,  and  the  like,  would  be  saved  entirely.     There 
would    be    abundant    employment   in  the  various  branches 
of  Industry  pursued  for   all   ages,  capacities,  tastes,   and  all 
that  would  be  saved  in  the  kitchen  and  the  woods  could  be 
advantageously  and  agreeably  employed  in  the  gardens  and 
nurseries,  the  mills  and  factories.     The  productive  force  of 
this  population  would  be  vastly  greater  than  under  existing 


44  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

arrangements,  while  its  economies  in  other  respects  would  be 
immense.  For  a  brief  season,  admit  that  these  advantages 
would  be  counterbalanced  by  inexperience  and  perverseness 
—  that  some  would  refuse  to  work  where  they  were  needed, 
and  insist  on  working  where  they  would  be  comparatively 
inefficient,  or  nowhere  —  that  bickerings  and  jealousies  would 
arise,  and  that  some  would  feel  that  their  work  was  not 
adequately  credited  and  remunerated — I  foresee  all  these 
difficulties,  and  more.  Yet  I  see  also,  the  end  being  kept 
steadily  in  view — that  of  having  no  unproductive  labor  or 
as  little  as  possible,  rewarding  all  work  done  according  to  its 
absolute  worth,  and  charging  each  head  of  a  family  the  simple 
cost  of  what  he  had — the  rent  of  his  exclusive  rooms  and 
the  actual  outlay  for  the  subsistence  and  education  of  his 
family  —  in  short,  establishing  Social  Justice  throughout — 
there  would  be  a  constant  tendency  and  approximation  toward 
the  state  of  things  desired  and  the  harmony  which  must  re 
sult  from  it.  The  defects  of  one  year  would  suggest  the 
remedies  of  the  next,  and  each  year's  adjustment  of  accounts 
would  be  more  satisfactory  than  the  last. 

The  immense  advantages  of  such  an  arrangement  with 
reference  to  Universal  Education  need  hardly  be  pointed  out. 
I  am  not  accustomed  to  take  desponding  views  of  Human 
Progress  and  Destiny,  yet  I  confess  that  the  existing  con 
dition  of  the  children  of  destitution  and  vice  with  regard  to 
Education  is  most  appalling.  Grant  that  the  means  of  Edu 
cation  be  rendered  ever  so  abundant  and  accessible,  how  are 
the  denizens  of  cellars  and  garrets,  subsisting  precariously  on 
the  products  of  chance  employment  and  beggary,  ever  to 
be  truly  and  thoroughly  instructed  ?  The  angel  may  trouble 
the  waters  incessantly,  but  who  shall  guaranty  that  these 
cripples  get  down  to  the  pool  ?  They  are  unclad,  uncouth, 
with  the  manners  and  feelings  which  befit  the  Pariahs  of 
Society — nay,  they  must  devote  to  their  poor  ways  of  getting 
a  living  the  time  demanded  by  the  school,  or  sink  into  still 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  45 

deeper  misery.  Make  schools  as  free  and  abundant  as  pos 
sible,  and  there  will  still  be  a  class  —  I  fear,  increasing  in 
number  —  who  will  be  withheld  by  extreme  poverty  and 
consequent  shabbiness  —  by  the  stolid  ignorance  or  brutal 
drunkenness  of  their  parents  —  by  infirmities  which  forbid 
their  attendance  on  a  school  located  at  some  distance  from 
their  homes  —  by  the  thousand  consequences  of  Want, 
Uncertainty,  Disease,  and  Vice  —  from  the  acquirement  of  a 
proper  Education.  But  in  an  Association  such  as  we  con 
template,  the  thorough  Intellectual,  Moral,  and  Physical 
Education  of  each  will  be  the  direct  and  palpable  interest  of 
all  —  a  matter  of  the  highest  and  most  intimate  concern.  The 
cost  of  the  books  now  thinly  scattered  in  five  hundred  dwel 
lings  will  procure  one  ample  and  comprehensive  Library, 
with  the  apparatus  and  materials  required  to  demonstrate  the 
truths  of  Chemistry  and  the  whole  range  of  Natural  Science. 
The  best  teachers  in  every  branch  will  in  time  be  selected 
— those  who  unite  a  natural  capacity  for  teaching  with  the 
fullest  attainments,  and  who  do  not  need  the  stimulus  of  high 
salaries  to  induce  them  to  devote  some  hours  of  each  day  to 
the  inculcation  of  Knowledge,  Industry,  and  Virtue.  Ere- 
quent  and  agreeable  alternations  from  the  school-room  to  the 
garden,  the  factory,  the  halls  and  grounds  set  apart  for  exer 
cise  and  recreation,  will  benefit  alike  teachers  and  scholars, 
giving  a  zest  to  learning  as  well  as  industry  unknown  to  our 
monotonous  drudgery,  whether  of  work  or  study.  In  short, 
I  see  no  reason  why  the  wildest  dreams  of  the  fanatical 
believer  in  Human  Progress  and  Perfectibility  may  not 
ultimately  be  realized,  and  each  child  so  trained  as  to  shun 
every  vice,  aspire  to  every  virtue,  attain  the  highest  practi 
cable  skill  in  Art  and  efficiency  in  Industry,  loving  and  pur 
suing  honest,  untasked  Labor  for  the  health,  vigor,  and  peace 
of  mind,  thence  resulting  as  well  as  for  its  more  palpable  re 
wards,  and  joyfully  recognising  in  universal  the  only  assu 
rance  of  individual  good. 


46  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Doubtless,  the  realization  of  such  visions  is  yet  afar  off, 
for  the  Actual  and  the  Possible  of  Human  Character  are  still 
immensely  separated.  We  can  not  wonder  that  Heaven 
seems  so  distant  while  Hell  is  so  near.  To  the  slave 
dancing  to  the  music  of  the  lash  in  some  Carolina  rice- 
swamp,  idleness  with  abundance  of  victual  is  the  highest  ideal 
of  existence  ;  not  so  to  Oberlin  or  Wilberforce.  The  dingy, 
back-bent  hireling  in  some  gloomy,  unwholesome  den  of 
Mammon,  whither  he  is  summoned  from  his  sleep  by  a  bell 
while  his  bones  yet  ache  with  yesterday's  protracted  toil,  will 
have  most  difficulty  in  realizing  that  he,  too,  might,  under 
different  auspices,  take  delight  and  pride  in  the  very  task  he 
now  performs  so  grudgingly.  But  give  him  a  true  Edu 
cation,  an  unfailing  Home,  a  direct  interest  in  the  product  of 
his  labor,  and  thus  in  its  excellence,  an  equal  voice  in 
choosing  his  superiors  and  an  equal  chance  to  be  chosen  if 
found  worthy;  workshops  planned  and  constructed  with 
express  reference  to  his  health  and  comfort ;  let  him  realize 
that  himself  and  family  are  the  Social  equals  of  all  around 
them,  and  his  children  as  well  educated  as  any,  with  equal 
chances  of  attaining  distinction  and  honor,  and  you  will  find 
him  an  entirely  different  being.  Idleness  and  dissipation  are 
the  paradise  of  the  overtaxed  body  and  the  vacant  mind ;  for 
the  rightly  trained  and  developed  they  have  no  fascinations. 

Whenever  the  class  of  Hired  Laborers  shall^e  brought  to 
realize  that  a  beneficently  Radical  Reform  in  its  condition  and 
its  relations  is  practicable,  then  that  Reform  will  be  on  the 
high  road  to  its  accomplishment.  It  is  the  desperate 
character  and  complication  of  the  disease  that  renders  its 
cure  so  difficult.  So  long  as  the  mass  of  those  who  must 
live  as  hirelings  by  rude  manual  toil  have  no  minds  above 
their  lot  —  no  aspirations  beyond  Blue  Monday, — it  will  be 
difficult  indeed  to  achieve  any  substantial  improvement  in 
their  condition.  It  is  a  melancholy  fact  that  while  it  has 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  47 

hitherto  required  comparatively  no  effort  to  rally  the  Millions 
in  behalf  of  an  effort  to  rend  and  destroy  —  to  tear  down  and 
scatter  abroad  —  it  has  been  difficult  to  bring  them  to  realize 
that  the  work  to  be  done  in  their  behalf  is  one  of  patience  not 
of  wrath  ;  of  construction,  not  destruction  ;  of  elevation  not 
abasement;  and  that  the  absolute  extinction  of  the  Capitalist 
class  would  avail  them  nothing  for  good,  very  much  for  evil, 
so  long  as  the  principles  which  exalt  the  few  and  depress  the 
many  are  left  in  unchecked  operation.  Marat  was  sure  there 
was  no  other  way  to  make  good  Sans  Culottes  of  the  Rich 
but  to  strip  them  to  their  shirts.  But  stripping  them  could 
avail  little  for  good  without  clothing  those  already  naked  ; 
and  then  these  have  become  proper  subjects  for  the  stripping 
operation  in  turn.  You  thus  wear  out  what  clothes  there 
are,  while  restraining  every  one  from  making  more,  yet 
nobody  is  permanently  clad.  All  is  confusion,  violence, 
unthrift,  uncertainty ;  until  by-and-by  some  strong-armed 
soldier  throws  his  sword  into  the  scale,  and  Anarchy  is  sup 
planted  by  Despotism.  Such  is  the  unvarying  history  of 
revolutions  impelled  by  hatred  and  the  envious  passion 
for  tearing  down  —  the  same  anciently,  recently,  now  and 
evermore. 

True  Reform  has  its  origin  in  a  different  spirit  and  con 
templates  a  different  end.  It  recognizes  all  men  as  brethren, 
and  desires  the  emancipation  of  the  miser  and  monopolist  no 
less  than  of  the  hireling  and  drudge  —  the  slave  of  his  own 

o  O 

money-bags  no  less  than  the  slave  of  another's  water-wheel. 
It  recognizes  the  truth  that  the  Social  evils  which  afflict  man 
kind  have  their  origin  in  the  errors  not  of  a  part  but  of  all, 
and  that  by  the  cooperation  of  all  should  they  be  overcome. 
It  compassionates  not  more  the  weary  servitor  of  the  loom  or 
the  hod  than  the  plethoric  victim  of  dyspepsia  or  hypochondria, 
dying  by  inches  for  the  want  of  that  healthful  exercise  of 
body  and  mind  which  nothing  but  the  consciousness  of 
sinews  usefully  employed  and  time  laudably  spent  can  really 

• 


48  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

give.  It  wars  with  no  existing  Rights  —  it  would  deal  gently 
even  with  established  Wrongs,  where  it  can  do  so  without 
treason  to  Human  Well-being.  Its  aims  are  not  narrow,  nor 
envious,  nor  vindictive,  and  it  would  be  led  to  distrust  itself 
if  those  from  time  to  time  won  to  its  standard  were  not 
elevated  and  purified  thereby.  When  the  strong  arms  and 
stout  hearts  of  the  men  of  rugged  toil  shall  have  rallied 
round  its  standard,  it  hopes  that,  however  long  deferred  may 
be  its  triumph,  their  gain  will  be  immediate  and  certain  ;  for 
it  will  have  commenced  in  themselves. 

But — sad  necessity  ! — Esau  must  have  pottage.  Price 
less  is  his  birthright,  but  its  use  seems  distant,  while  Hunger 
is  sorely  pinching  him  now.  We  must  not  be  surprised  nor 
provoked  that  those  who  most  palpably  need  a  true  Social 
Reform  seem  most  indifferent  to  its  accomplishment,  and 
least  willing  to  make  the  efforts  and  sacrifices  essential 
thereto.  The  hopeless  infidelity  of  the  most  depressed  as  to 
any  real  improvement  in  their  Social  condition  is  one  of  the 
strongest  demonstrations  of  its  necessity,  and  of  the  duty  of 
those  a  little  less  unfortunate  to  struggle  manfully  and  un 
grudgingly  in  the  cause  of  Universal  Reform. 

Let  us  take  courage  from  the  evidences  of  Progress  all 
around  us.  It  is  not  half  a  century  since  the  Slave-Trade 
was  in  its  glory,  and  men  eminent  in  Church  and  State 
made  fortunes  by  engaging  in  it  without  reproach  or  scruple. 
We  have  yet  Doctors  of  Divinity  who  justify  laws  which 
authorize  the  buying  and  selling  of  mothers  from  their  chil 
dren  ;  but  this  is  evidently  dying  out;  and,  in  a  few  years, 
Sermons  proving  Slavery  a  Bible  institution  will  be  adver 
tised  as  antique  curiosities.  So  of  Privateering,  War,  and 
the  traffic  in  Intoxicating  Liquors.  To  our  impatient 
spirits,  the  march  of  improvement  often  seems  mournfully 
slow  ;  but  when  we  consider  where  the  world  is  and  where 
it  has  been — how  recently,  for  instance,  a  man  could  only 
speak  against  Slavery,  however  temperately  and  guardedly, 


EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR.  49 

at  the  hazard  of  personal  violence  and  defilement,  while 
press  after  press,  on  bare  suspicion  that  it  would  be  used  to 
disseminate  Anti-Slavery,  was  destroyed  by  mob  violence, 
and  in  one  instance  the  life  of  its  heroic  owner  and  defender 
along;  with  it  —  and  now,  the  strolling  Abolition  lecturer  is 
more  likely  to  be  mobbed  for  asserting  that  any  body  in  the 
Free  States  justifies  or  palliates  Slavery  than  for  condemn 
ing  it  himself — we  ought  to  be  assured  that  the  age  which 
has  given  us  Railroads  and  Locomotives,  Steam  Presses  and 
Electric  Telegraphs,  will  not  pass  away  without  having 
effected  or  witnessed  a  vast  change  for  the  better,  alike  in  the 
moral  and  the  physical  condition  of  mankind. 

For  that  change  let  us  faithfully  labor  and  undoubtingly 
hope.  Whether  its  consummation  shall  take  the  precise 
form  which  you  or  I  now  anticipate  or  prefer,  who  shall  say  ? 
Nay,  who  need  seriously  care  ?  Enough  that  we  know  well 
that  all  things  are  wisely  ordered  by  One  whose  observation 
no  sparrow's  fall  can  escape  :  in  whose  providence  no  gen 
erous  effort  can  fail  of  its  reward.  It  can  not  be  that  the 
vastly-increased  Intelligence,  Philanthropy,  Productive  Ca 
pacity,  and  Industrial  energy  of  our  age  shall  fail  to  leave 
their  impress  upon  the  condition  of  even  the  most  abject  and 
least  fortunate  of  our  Race.  We  could  not  retard  the  great 
forward  movement  of  Humanity  if  we  would  ;  but  each  of 
us  may  decide  for  himself  whether  to  share  in  the  glory  of 
promoting  it  or  incur  the  shame  of  having  looked  coldly  and 
indifferently  on,  preferring  present  ease  and  pleasure  to  the 
stern  calls  of  Duty,  the  soft  pleadings  of  Human  Brotherhood, 
bidding  us  '  remember  those  in  bonds  as  bound  with  them.' 
Each  age  summons  its  own  heroes ;  ours  demands  those 
who  will  labor  and  if  need  be  suffer  reproach  in  behalf  of  a 
Social  Order  based  on  Universal  Justice,  not  the  dominion 
of  Power  over  Need  ;  on  the  spirit  of  Christianity,  not  the 
supremacy  of  Mammon.  The  struggle  may  be  long,  but 
the  issue  can  not  be  doubtful.  Fortunate  shall  they  be  es- 


50  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

teemed  hy  future  generations  who  are  privileged  to  stand 
in  Earth's  noblest  Thermopylae  and  battle  for  the  rights,  for 
the  hopes,  for  the  enduring  good,  of  Humanity  in  all  time  to 
come.  It  is  a  distinction  to  which  the  loftiest  might  well  as 
pire,  but  which  proffers  opportunity  alike  to  the  humblest. 
Who  would  slumber  through  life  ingloriously  when  such 
crowns  are  to  be  won  ? 


LIFE  — THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  51 


II. 
LIFE —  THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL: 

A      LECTURE. 

THIS  dry,  old  mummy  Life,  so  weird  and  withered,  so 
parched  and  hlackened,  so  hackneyed  and  threadhare,  shall 
I  be  able  to  draw  from  it  a  single  idea  or  thought  worthy  of 
your  patient  regard  ?  Doubtless,  there  is  warm  blood  yet 
lingering  within  the  worn  tenement,  despite  the  incessant 
phlebotomy  to  which  it  has  been  subjected  ;  now  and  then 
by  skillful  leech,  but  always  by  swarms — ay,  clouds  —  of 
minute,  but  indefatigable  musquitoes.  Should  I  fail  utterly 
in  my  attempt,  blame  the  operator,  not  the  subject. 

Human  Life  —  unlike  what  we  know  of  the  lower  creation, 
unlike  what  we  fairly  presume  of  the  higher — is  twofold, 
the  Actual  and  the  Ideal.  Our  daily  deeds,  our  daily  aspi 
rations,  clash  with  each  other — are  the  positive  and  negative 
poles  of  our  being.  Desire  and  Duty  are  the  centrifugal 
and  centripetal  forces  whose  counterbalancing  attractions  hold 
us  firm  to  our  appointed  orbit  in  the  grand  career  of  exist 
ence.  A  lofty  discontent  with  the  Actual  is  the  main  impulse 
to  whatever  is  noble  and  heroic,  as  a  mean  dissatisfaction 
with  physical  conditions  —  a  pining  for  richer  food,  or  dress, 
or  ampler  service  —  is  the  incentive  to  the  ignobler  efforts  of 
the  million.  A  thoroughly  contented  man,  could  such  be 
found,  rnijjht  have  his  uses.  He  would  tend  to  moderate 


52  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

the  fierceness  of  Aspiration  and  soothe  the  pangs  of  Disquiet, 
so  prevalent  in  the  human  breast ;  but  a  thoroughly  con 
tented  community  would  be  a  blank,  a  failure,  a  practical 
nonentity.  China  affords  us  some  idea  of  it,  by  approxi 
mation  ;  and  to  what  purpose  those  Three  Hundred  Millions 
of  Chinese  have  lived  these  forty  centuries,  who  beneath 
Omniscience  can  say  ?  The  divergence  of  the  Ideal  from 
the  Actual  liberates  the  electricity  of  life. 

This  discrepancy  pervades  alike  the  cottage  and  the 
palace.  The  swart  laborer  discerns  the  conditions  of  hap 
piness  only  in  the  luxuries  and  dainties  of  the  man  of 
millions ;  while  Croesus,  though  he  hugs  his  possessions, 
finds  them  a  heavy  and  thorny  burden.  Ease,  the  grand 
desideratum,  visits  neither  the  rude  pallet  on  which  the  one 
rests  his  toil-worn,  aching  limbs,  nor  the  downy  couch 
whereon  the  other  nightly  struggles  with  the  twin  demons 
Dyspepsia  and  Hypochondria,  to  whom  his  sumptuous  fare 
and  exemption  from  physical  labor  have  rendered  him  a 
helpless  prey.  "  O  that  I  were  a  man  !"  cries  the  impatient 
child,  "  then  I  should  no  more  be  tyrannized  over,  and 
treated  as  a  helpless  idiot !  Childhood  is  allowed  no  scope 
— no  respect ;  its  joys  are  few  and  trifling  :  haste,  haste  ! 
hour  of  my  emancipation  !"  "  O  that  I  were  a  child  again  !" 
responds  the  man  ;  "  that  this  load  of  consuming  cares  and 
duties  were  lifted  from  my  burning,  boiling,  half-distracted 
brain  !  Childhood !  glad  season  of  innocence  and  bliss ! 
when  simple  life  was  pleasure,  and  any  casual  grief  was 
quickly  chased  from  the  mind's  dial  by  whole  troops  of 
dancing  joys  !"  The  king  often  looks  on  the  beggar  with 
something  akin  to  envy  —  he  would  not  exchange  conditions, 
as  a  whole ;  but  he  would  give  much,  very  much,  to  be  rid, 
for  a  few  days,  of  his  tiresome,  never-ending  round  of  dull 
formalities,  and  absurd,  exacting  ceremonies,  and  unloved 
but  inevitable  associates,  and  harassing  councils,  and  state 
dinners  to  be  eaten  with  a  headache  instead  of  an  appetite, 


LIFE  — THE  IDE  AT,  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  53 

and  turbulent  provinces,  and  unreasonable  yet  tenacious 
suitors,  and  murmuring  ministers  or  allies,  with  death-war 
rants,  demagogues,  and  a  thousand  shifting  causes  of  life 
long  disquiet.  He  would  not  be  a  beggar  —  pride  and  fear 
forbid  —  the  beggar  might  do  very  well  as  a  king,  while  the 
king  would  starve  as  a  beggar — but,  oh,  what  would  he  not 
give  for  a  week's  free  roving  through  forest  and  heather, 
plucking  the  fruits  fresh  and  juicy  from  the  branches,  instead 
of  having  them  handed  him,  dead  and  tasteless,  in  golden 
vessels  borne  by  supple  slaves.  Food  they  may  still  be,  but 
that  the  palled  appetite  rejects  ;  fruits  they  ceased  to  be  when 
Cod's  sky  no  longer  bent  unobstructedly  above  them,  and 
the  ripple  of  the  brook  and  sighing  of  the  winds  through  the 
branches  blent  no  longer  with  the  blithe  carol  of  the  birds  all 
around.  Not  even  for  a  king  will  nature  be  defrauded ;  and 
the  truant  boy,  who,  by  long  watching,  has  found  the  gold 
finch's  nest,  shall  vainly  consent  to  sell  his  prize  to  another. 
The  nest  and  its  twittering  tenants  may  be  carried  to  my 
lady's  window  and  made  fast  there,  but  that  which  made 
their  charm  remains  with  the  wood  and  its  urchin  ranger.* 

It  was  no  hyperbole,  therefore,  no  windy  pretense  of 
'  Macedonia's  madman,'  when  he  said  of  the  cynic  of  the 
tub,  "  If  I  were  not  Alexander,  I  would  be  Diogenes."  Ft 
was  his  impulse  to  illustrate  Manhood  thoroughly  in  a  par 
ticular  direction ;  lacking  this  impulse,  he  would  have  been 
driven  to  that  different  sphere  illustrated  with  equal  thorough 
ness  by  his  stoical  cotemporary.  Perchance  he  dimly  appre 
hended,  through  all  the  pomp  and  glitter  and  physical  power 
and  fulsome  adulation  surrounding  him,  that  the  philosopher 
who  needed  nothing,  wished  nothing,  but  his  personal  share 
of  God's  sunshine,  was  truly  mightier  than  the  lord  of  con 
tinents  who  could  weep  for  more  kingdoms  to  conquer. 
Possibly  he  discerned  that,  after  a  score  or  so  of  centuries, 

*  Of  course,  this  idea  must  have  been  suggested  by  a  passage  in  Emerson's  iiiK» 
poem,  "  Each  in  All,"  though  unconsciously. 


54  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

the  truth  should  be  made  apparent  even  to  the  common 
understanding,  so  that  the  era  which  witnessed  the  overthrow 
of  Darius  and  Persia,  should  come  to  be  regarded  as  the  age, 
not  of  Alexander,  but  of  Diogenes.  But,  even  if  this  be  ex 
alting  too  far  the  prescience  of  the  son  of  Philip,  let  us  never 
distrust  his  sincerity.  He,  too,  was  a  veritable  man  in  his 
perverse,  bad  way,  and  knew  how  to  reverence  simple  Man 
hood.  In  a  world  of  Alexanders,  a  Diogenes  would  never 
lack  sunshine. 

Have  we  not  here  an  explanation  of  the  charm  which 
Literature  exercises  even  over  the  most  simple,  unlettered, 
and  prosaic  ?  The  Arab  circle  gathered  around  the  evening 
fire,  hang  breathless  on  the  lips  of  the  narrator,  as  he  re 
counts  the  wondrous  adventures  of  some  Haroun,  Saladin, 
or  Rustam,  because  each  listener  is  engrossed  in  the  devel 
opment  of  qualities  which  he  feels  stirring  within  him,  and 
which  propitious  circumstances  might  have  ripened  into 
deeds  like  those  which  challenge  his  admiration.  In  the 
wildest  flight  of  imagination,  the  least  credible  adventure  of 
paladin  or  genii-aided  hero,  we  recognise  some  before  un- 
discerned  possibility  of  our  own  nature.  The  wonder-worker 
has  not  yet  vaulted  far  above  our  heads ;  he  has  ascended, 
indeed,  but  has  drawn  us  up  with  him.  I  think  the  ultimate 
lesson  of  History  is  not  dissimilar.  What  do  we  read  with 
more  delight,  even  in  the  polished,  glittering  pages  of  Gib 
bon  or  Robertson,  than  their  narratives  of  the  resignation  of 
empire,  the  glad  exchange  of  unrivaled  power  for  powerless 
retirement  and  seclusion,  by  Dioclesian  and  Charles  V.  ? 
These  are  true  heroes,  because  recognised  by  our  hearts  as 
brethren,  and  brethren  of  all  mankind.  Of  narrow,  one-sided 
persons  —  mere  plowmen,  pedagogues,  generals  or  kings  — 
the  world  is  full  enough ;  but  the  True  Man  is  universal  — 
includes  all  these  and  more,  and  he  it  is  we  would  have 
brought  palpably  before  us  —  him  we  would  grapple  to  our 
hearts  with  hooks  of  steel.  "  Equal  to  either  fortune," 


LIFE— THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  55 

was  the  talismanic  expression  of  a  mighty  though  erring 
spirit ;  the  thought  would  almost  redeem  a  life  of  crime.  It 
is  this  sentiment  which  has  made,  and  will  long  make, 
Byron's  gloomy  heroes  popular,  in  defiance  of  their  misan 
thropy  and  utter  want  of  conscience.  Childe  Harold  and 
Lara  have  great  faults  —  their  lives  have  "little  relish  of 
salvation"  in  them — but  they  display  a  wide  range  of  capa 
cities,  and  are  at  home  in  any  environment  of  circumstances 
—  they  are  men,  and  regard  all  around  them  with  searching, 
manly  gaze,  looking  straight  through  gauds  and  trappings  to 
the  unclothed  heart,  and  testing  all  things  by  absolute 
standards.  Misanthropic  themselves,  they  yet  inspire  in  us 
a  deeper  confidence  and  a  loftier  pride  in  humanity.  We 
see  their  error,  and  avoid  it  if  we  choose ;  the  trust  they  in 
spire  in  the  yet  unfathomed  capacities  of  our  nature  endures. 
The  military  leader  who,  having  won  by  his  ability  a  mighty 
and  conclusive  victory,  shuns  the  parade  of  triumph,  the 
roads  strewn  with  flowers,  and  lined  with  grateful,  adoring 
thousands,  the  civic  banquets  and  the  munificence  of  rescued 
kings,  choosing  rather  to  commune  with  himself  in  the  deep 
forest,  or  retire  to  the  dim  cloister,  there  to  ponder  over 
Man's  career  and  destiny  —  this  is  the  hero  our  hearts  yearn 
to,  for  by  him  they  are  chastened  and  exalted.  He  has 
added  something,  by  exploration  at  least,  to  the  common 
domain  of  our  race.  And  thus  our  Washington,  achieving 
no  brilliant  or  astonishing  success  as  a  General  or  Statesman, 
vaulted  at  once  to  the  topmost  round  of  greatness  by  sin 
cerely,  steadfastly  refusing  a  continuance  of  power,  exalting 
himself  above  all  conquerors  and  autocrats  by  simply  decli 
ning  their  company,  and  refusing  to  be  accounted  more  or 
other  than  a  man. 

Rare  indeed  are  the  individuals  who  live  exactly  the  life 
they  would — whose  Ideal  and  Actual  exist  in  congenial, 
blended  harmony.  The  son  but  seldom  finds  the  conditions 
he  seeks  beneath  the  kindly,  paternal  roof;  as  Manhood 


56  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

opens  to  his  gaze,  he  quits  its  warm  shelter,  and  strikes  off 
into  the  bleak  world  without,  to  find  or  make  his  future 
sphere  and  home.  Art,  Trade,  Adventure,  Professional 
Life,  present  their  varied  attractions,  and  each  wins  some ; 
while  to  others,  the  stormy,  heaving  Ocean  wears  a  winning 
smile,  and  even  grim  and  horrid  War  finds  votaries.  A  dis 
content  with  the  Actual  is  pouring  Europe's  surplus  millions 
on  the  Western  shore  of  the  Atlantic,  and  thence  over  the 
whole  surface  of  our  continent.  It  is  dotting  the  prairies  of 
Illinois  with  the  cabins  of  the.  sons  of  New-England,  and 
year  by  year  the  smoke  of  the  squatter's  lodge  rises  nearer 
and  nearer  the  Rocky  Mountains,  wiiile  hardy  bands  have 
already  passed  those  formidable  barriers,  and  are  lining 
with  their  tents  the  shores  of  the  mighty  Pacific.  Torrid 
heats  and  Arctic  snows  are  lightly  braved  by  thousands  at 
all  times,  eagerly  courting  any  change  from  the  wearisome 
inanity  of  their  past  existence.  Daily  the  city's  crowded 
streets  are  pressed  by  thousands  fresh  from  the  plow  and  the 
rural  workshop,  who  mind  not  how  thronged  the  course  on 
which  they  are  entering,  so  that  they  can  but  secure  a  foot 
hold  upon  it,  and  Hope  beckons  to  them  from  the  distant 
goal.  But  intermingled  with  that  host  of  eager,  sanguine 
strivers,  I  see  another,  it  seems  an  older,  thinner,  feebler 
band,  who  also  have  their  trunks  and  portmanteaus  beside 
them  :  they  are  the  sated  or  oftener  disappointed  seekers  of 
Wealth  or  Fame,  who,  having  sped  their  arrow  and  spent 
their  strength  in  the  rugged  rivalry  of  the  mart,  are  seeking 
once  more  the  country's  green  lanes  and  shady  quiet — for 
health,  perchance,  or  peace,  or  space  to  breathe,  and  time  to 
think  or  pray — at  all  events  for  grassy  graves.  Not  theirs 
the  firm,  elastic  step,  the  gallant,  sturdy  bearing ;  the  soul 
intent  on  stern  encounter  and  high  achievement.  No  more 
is  *  Excelsior'  their  motto,  but  '  Implora  pace;' — their 
youth's  Ideal,  whether  realized  or  not,  has  faded,  flickered, 
disappeared,  giving  place  to  one  less  lofty,  more  readily 


LIFE  — THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  57 

attainable.  A  snug  cottage  and  a  few  pliant  acres  would 
now  be  happiness  to  him  whose  ambition  once  clutched  at 
mines,  or  squares,  or  kingdoms.  Who  shall  say  that  career 
has  been  a  failure  which,  though  it  has  won  no  golden  store, 
has  wrought  this  change  of  spirit  ? 

A  discontent  with  the  Actual  is  the  mainspring  of  most 
that  is  noble  in  human  endeavor.  It  spurs  the  traveler  into 
the  darkest  dens  of  African  barbarism  or  Tartar  cruelty,  and 
sends  the  Missionary  to  spend  his  life  rapidly  in  sickly  Bur 
mese  huts  or  frozen  Esquimaux  lodges — joyfully  dying  that 
those  he  never  saw  till  now  may  live  for  ever.  The  same 
spirit  is  now  lighting  the  dens  of  loathsomest  vice  with  the 
unwonted  presence  of  angel  purity  and  pity,  and  braving  the 
filth  and  noisomeness  of  prisons,  heedless  of  aught  save  the 
human  hearts  there  shackled  and  pining  for  sympathy  and 
freedom.  Not  even  the  scaffold's  grim  appointments  can 
repel  its  fearless  approaches,  for  wherever  it  sees  Humanity, 
however  scarred  and  ulcerated,  however  defiled  or  blasted  by 
sin's  ravages,  it  recognises  the  lineaments  of  a  brother. 

But  a  revolt  against  the  tame  insipidity  of  common  life 
impels  to  evil  as  well  as  good  —  hurls  the  warrior,  the  slaver, 
the  pirate,  on  his  fell  career,  and  blackens  earth  with  carnage 
and  ruin.  It  is  not  enough  that  man,  as  he  is,  should  act  up 
to  the  standard  of  his  aspirations,  for  these  also  need  to  be 
corrected  and  exalted. 

Two  antagonist  thoughts  —  Self  and  All  —  lie  at  the  bot 
tom  of  the  many  warring  tendencies  in  the  breasts  of  man 
kind.  Their  symbols  may  be  found  in  the  geocentric  and 
heliocentric  theories  of  planetary  motion.  The  advocates 
of  the  former  appeal  with  success  to  the  human  senses  unin- 
stmcted  by  Science  —  to  our  eyes  to  bear  witness  that  the 
Sun  does  truly  move  around  the  earth  —  to  our  position  and 
that  of  all  unfixed,  gravitating  bodies,  to  prove  that  the 
Earth  is  a  vast  plane  and  does  not  turn  over  day  by  day. 


58  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

The  evidence  for  this  theory  is  such  that  its  truth  may  be 
said  to  be  intuitively  perceived  by  every  infant.  But  by- 
and-by  comes  along  the  Astronomer  with  his  telescope,  the 
Mathematician  with  his  Geometry  and  Algebra,  and  reverses 
this  conviction,  enlarging  the  bounds  of  the  visible  Universe, 
and  developing  Laws  of  which  the  child  knew  nothing.  Yet 
by  far  the  larger  part  of  mankind  still  live  and  die,  as  all 
formerly  lived  and  died,  in  the  undoubting  belief  that  the 
Earth  is  daily  circled  by  the  Sun  and  Stars. 

So  with  human  character  and  effort.  The  child  is  born  a 
citizen  of  the  great  Commonwealth  of  Man,  but  his  entrance 
to  it  is  through  the  narrow  gate  of  the  Family.  His  practical 
education  there,  during  the  most  impressible  and  important 
period  of  his  life,  stamps  into  his  mind  three  cardinal  maxims, 
namely : 

1st.  To  take  special  good  care  of  himself  in  all  cases,  and 
shape  everything  he  can  control  to  his  own  enjoyment  or 
uses  ; 

2d.  To  bestow  whatever  he  does  not  thus  need,  or  can 
not  make  available  to  his  personal  ends,  on  the  narrow  circle 
by  which  he  is  surrounded  ; 

3d.  To  give  all  beyond  this — his  blessing,  for  instance  — 
to  the  general  good  of  mankind. 

Who  can  fail  to  see  that  the  soul  is  distorted,  shriveled, 
dwarfed,  by  this  schooling  ? — that  the  boy  becomes  a  selfish, 
sensual,  grasping  man  —  in  fact,  only  a  politer  beast  of 
prey?  The  influences  most  immediately  surrounding  him 
from  the  cradle  have  all  tended  to  this.  Mine  and  Thine  — 
the  former  to  be  prized  and  treasured — the  latter  to  be  ac 
quired  or  left  to  take  care  of  itself —  are  the  first  distinctions 
impressed  on  his  unfolding  intellect.  All  within  this  narrow 
tenement,  within  these  encircling  fences,  is  ours,  to  be 
guarded,  toiled  for,  beautified  ;  all  without  is  others',  to  be 
obtained,  envied,  or  disregarded.  The  stranger  child  who 
oversteps  that  magic  ring  in  search  of  some  fruit  or  herb, 


LIFE  — THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  59 

which,  though  enjoyed  to  satiety  by  us,  would  be  luxury  to 
him,  is  to  be  saluted  with  a  stone  or  mastiff  for  his  depraved 
temerity,  and  driven  back  to  sate  his  gnawing  hunger  on  the 
nettles  of  the  highway.  Now  I  am  not  quarreling  with  this 
as  a  fault  of  the  individual,  or  a  wanton  exhibition  of  churl 
ishness.  On  the  contrary,  I  recognise  it  as  a  necessary 
feature  of  a  system  —  necessary  while  the  system  shall  en 
dure.  I  am  but  regarding  it  in  the  light  of  its  influence  on 
the  molding  of  Human  Character.  And  in  this  light  I  do 
not  hesitate  to  say  that  the  Family  and  Social  influences 
surrounding  our  youth  are  most  unfavorable  to  the  develop 
ment  of  manly,  generous,  sympathizing  natures.  These  in 
fluences  tend  to  educate  the  human  race  into  two  classes, 
thieves  and  constables  —  to  foster  an  eternal  antagonism  be 
tween  Wealth  and  Want  —  and  throw  every  one  into  the 
attitude  of  a  scout  in  an  enemy's  country,  pressing  cautiously 
forward  with  eyes  piercing  the  thickets  around  him  and  rifle 
in  the  hollow  of  his  arm.  Here  and  there  an  individual  tri 
umphs  over  all  these  influences,  by  the  force  of  rare  qualities 
or  a  singularly  happy  training,  and  shows  us  what  Mankind 
might  be,  give  them  but  fair  play.  But  a  race  of  Heroes  of 
Humanity  —  a  People  elevated  to  Love  and  Universal  Bles 
sing —  such  we  have  not  and  can  not  expect  until  the  influ 
ences  which  overshadow  Childhood,  our  modes  of  training 
youth  for  [Manhood,  are  radically  changed. 

And  a  race  of  Heroes  was  never  more  needed  on  earth 
than  now.  The  old  manifestations  of  Heroism  have  become 
effete  or  abhorrent,  but  the  Nineteenth  Century  has  need  of 
many  a  Hercules,  a  Hector,  an  Achilles,  who  shall  be  all  its 
own.  Its  Patriotism  demands  relief  from  the  vain  boasters, 
the  self-seekers,  the  noisy  braggarts,  who,  reckless  of  general 
misery  and  ruin,  would  fain  involve  nations  wantonly  in 
butchery  and  deadly  hate,  that  they  may  chance  to  riot  in 
the  spoils  of  the  universal  devastation.  Its  religion  pleads 
for  release  from  the  stifling  bondages  of  Cant  and  Formalism 


b'O  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

—  from  sour  asceticism  and  a  pestilent  wrangling  on  points 
of  non-practical  belief.  It  protests  against  laying  emphasis 
on  any  article  of  a  creed  which  can  not  be  embodied  and 
evinced  in  a  life.  Its  Philanthropy,  pointing  to  new,  vast, 
slightly-explored  fields  inviting  effort  for  Human  Well-being, 
calls  on  the  generous,  the  hopeful,  the  ardent,  to  engage 
heartily  in  the  work  of  securing  to  the  next  generation  a  bet 
ter  world  than  that  which  we  received  from  the  last. 

Ah  !  if  we  had  but  a  few  regiments  of  life-enlisted  volun 
teers  in  the  service  of  Humanity,  who,  having  first  graduated 
their  own  physical  wants  to  the  standard  of  real  necessity, 
should  consecrate  all  their  powers,  mental  and  physical,  to 
the  persistent,  unwearied,  unshackled  increase  of  Human 
Happiness  and  diminution  of  the  causes  of  Suffering,  the 
world  could  not  remain  where  it  is,  but  must  move  forward 
swiftly  to  that  fairer  future  which  can  not  be  merely  a  Poet's 
dream.  The  history  of  Lot's  sojourn  in  and  escape  from 
Sodom  is  not  without  its  enduring  lesson.  States,  cities, 
communities,  are  preserved  from  destruction,  so  long  as  pre 
served  at  all,  by  so  much  virtue  as  they  embody  ;  when  that 
wanes  to  insufficiency,  the  remnant  may  escape  or  linger, 
but  the  destruction  of  the  depraved  mass  is  inevitable.  And, 
as  the  absolute  lack  of  moral  good  is  inexorable  ruin,  so  is 
its  unusual  prevalence  the  sure  occasion  of  strength  and 
prosperity.  There  is  no  habitable  portion  of  our  globe 
where  a  thoroughly  virtuous  population  might  not  reconstitute 
the  Garden  of  Eden. 

But  to  the  formation  of  such  a  people,  few  influences  con 
duce,  while  those  which  forbid  it  are  incessant  and  innumer 
able.  There  has  been  little  systematic  training  to  heroism 
of  any  sort  since  the  days  of  the  Spartans.  Our  children  are 
steeped  in  selfishness  from  their  cradles,  and  nine-tenths  of 
them  are  practically  taught  to  dread  Useful  Labor  as  odious 
and  degrading,  and  to  regard  idleness,  with  sensuality  and 
ostentation,  as  the  summitm  bonum  of  life.  I  know  that  some- 


LIFE  — THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  CI 

thing  different  from  this  is  stolidly  dealt  out,  though  never 
pointedly,  consistently  taught,  from  the  Catechisms ;  but  I 
am  speaking  of  the  every-day  lessons,  and  not  those  which 
are  inculcated  only  on  Sunday,  if  ever.  How  many  chil 
dren  in  a  thousand,  whether  rich  or  poor,  are  taught  to  re 
gard  virtuous  poverty  in  humble  garb  as  really  more  to  be 
honored  and  desired  than  wealth  undistinguished  by  worth  ? 
How  many  are  taught  to  heed  God's  appointment,  "  Six  days 
shalt  thou  labor,"  as  plainly  directed  to  them,  and  by  them 
to  be  joyfully  and  faithfully  obeyed,  irrespective  of  riches  or 
station  ?  How  many  are  early  taught  that  they  can  have  no 
right  to  squander  on  their  own  appetites  or  pride  that  which 
the  law  of  the  land  says  is  theirs,  but  for  want  of  which  an 
other  suffers  ?  What  reverend  monitor  now  says,  habitually  and 
earnestly,  and  not  unheededly,  to  the  child  of  affluence  and 
luxury,  '  Sell  all  thou  hast,  and  give  to  the  Poor,  then  follow 
Him,  whose  only  personal  disciples  were  the  poor?'  Alas  ! 
the  flower  of  life  is  cankered  in  the  bud,  and  what  should  be 
beauty  and  fragrance  is  turned  to  deformity  and  death  ! 

Next  to  the  lessons  of  infancy  come  those  of  the  School, 
with  its  constant  bickerings  and  ardent,  envious  rivalries  for 
advancement  and  honors.  All  is  intensely  individual  — 
egotistic.  The  school-boy's  triumphs  are  won  over  and  not 
for  his  comrades.  His  glory  is  their  mortification  and 
shame  ;  his  disasters  the  theme  of  their  undisguised,  un 
checked  exultation.  Thence  he  passes  into  some  sphere 
of  active  life,  and  finds  the  same  law  everywhere  prevailing, 
and  producing  its  natural- results.  The  brilliant  leader  at  the 
bar  makes  a  rapid  fortune,  but  the  unknown  hundreds  of 
middling  counselors  are  left  to  starve ;  and  the  popular 
physician  who  is  supposed  to  cure  everybody  dooms  his  fellow 
practitioners  to  that  consumption  for  which  Falstaff  could 
'  get  no  remedy.'  Everywhere  the  victor  in  the  grand  battle 
of  Life  advances  to  grasp  the  laurel  over  piles  of  unheeded 
G 


62  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

corpses.  He  can  not  afford  to  calculate  too  nicely  the  moral 
nature  and  consequences  of  each  act — he  must  live  ;  and 
the  more  flagrant  and  palpable  the  guilt  of  the  felon  whom 
the  lawyer's  skill  saves  from  justice,  the  more  brilliant  is  that 
lawyer's  triumph,  the  more  extravagant  his  fee, — the  more 
rapid  his  march  to  fame  and  fortune. 

But  perhaps  the  most  imperative  of  the  influences  of 
practical  life  to  narrow  and  distort  the  man  is  that  exercised 
by  Traffic.  To  obtain  More  for  Less — this  is  the  aim  and 
the  impulse  of  Trade.  The  game  of  the  counter,  like  that 
of  the  boxing-ring,  places  two  persons  opposite  each  other  at 
proper  distance,  and  bids  them  shake  hands  and  begin. 
That  each  may  be  a  gainer  by  the  bargain  is  of  course  practi 
cable  ;  (though  which  of  them  naturally  cares  for  this  ?)  that 
both  may  be  honest  men  is  freely  conceded.  The  criticism 
impeaches  not  the  men  but  the  attitude  in  which  they  are 
pitted  against  each  other.  Where  Wealth  is  the  object  of 
general  and  eager  desire,  where  Labor  is  loathed  and  Luxury 
coveted  —  it  is  too  hard  on  frail  Human  Nature  to  place  it 
where  a  slight  departure  from  rectitude  may  win  its 
thousands.  The  temptation  may  be  resisted  —  it  doubtless 
often  is  ;  for  Trade  has  furnished  its  full  quota  of  the  upright 
and  more  than  its  share  of  the  benevolent  of  our  race ;  but 
while  these  may  probably  have  owed  to  Commerce  the  means 
of  being  liberal,  I  doubt  whether  any  have  been  indebted  to 
it  for  their  integrity.  Of  that,  a  man  must  carry  all  into  a 
life  of  buying  and  selling  that  he  expects  to  bring  out  again, 
and  he  can  hardly  afford  to  commence  business  on  a  small 
capital  either.  If  a  man  of  unsettled  or  weak  principles 
ever  trafficked  five  years  without  becoming  a  rogue,  he 
must  present  a  striking  evidence  of  the  sustaining,  saving 
mercy  of  an  overruling  Providence. 

The  position  and  sphere  of  the  independent,  virtuous,  con 
tented  Farmer  has  from  earliest  time  been  pointed  at  as  one 


LIFE  — THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  G3 

of  the  most  fortunate  and  healthful,  mentally  as  well  as 
physically,  that  earth  can  afford.  Living  in  the  immediate 
and  visible  presence  of  the  all-embracing  Heavens,  directly 
dependent  on  the  Author  of  all  for  whatever  blesses  him,  he 
would  seem  to  be  marked  out  for  integrity  and  elevation  of 
sentiment.  Nature  will  not  be  cheated  ;  whoever  shall  under 
take  to  palm  upon  her  a  single  bushel  of  chalk  for  lime,  for 
instance,  will  find  her  incapable  of  relishing  his  ingenuity. 
So  much  for  so  much,  is  her  invariable  law  ;  no  shams  nor 
appearances  avail  anything  with  her — even  her  children  the 
crows  are  not  half  so  often  taken  in  by  them  as  the  contrivers 
imagine.  With  unequaled  advantages  for  the  maintenance 
or  attainment  of  health  and  vigor,  with  a  thousand  silent 
preachers  of  the  blessedness  of  Temperance,  Exercise, 
Justice,  and  Truth,  constantly  attending  him,  the  Farmer's 
character  would  seem  insensibly,  irresistibly  moulded  to 
probity  and  honor.  In  his  vocation,  a  bow  and  a  smirk  avail 
not ;  that  which  comes  not  from  the  core  is  nothing  and 
passes  for  nothing.  Only  where  he  ceases  to  be  a  worker 
and  begins  to  be  a  trader  in  other  men's  labor  or  the  fruits 
of  his  own,  does  the  temptation  to  injustice  and  insincerity 
begin.  Living  ever  in  the  presence  of  Heaven,  and  in 
direct,  visible  dependence  on  its  free  bounties,  we  should 
say  that  the  Farmer's  bearing  should  ever  tell  of  the  free, 
bland  breezes,  and  his  countenance  reflect  the  stars. 

And  yet,  on  practical  acquaintance,  we  find  him  quite 
often  another  being — narrow,  prejudiced,  and  selfish  ;  per 
verse,  sensual,  and  depraved ;  a  foe  to  other  men's  good  and 
his  own.  And  not  this  merely,  but  his  sons  have  no  love 
for  his  vocation  ;  they  too  generally  escape  it  wrhen  they  can, 
or  embrace  it  only  because  they  have  not  the  ability  or  detest 
the  study  necessary  to  make  them  anything  else.  From  the 
noblest  and  richest  rural  homestead,  you  will  see  the  youth 
ful  heir  eagerly  hieing  to  the  distant  city,  there  to  consecrate 
years  to  the  exhibition  of  sarsnets  to  simpering,  shopping 


64  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

misses,  or  to  the  service  of  some  six-by-eight  subterranean 
money-changer's  den,  which  a  hedgehog  would  disdain  to 
inhabit.  Where  one  youth  is  heartily  seeking  the  Farmer's 
life  from  choice,  there  are  forty  striving  or  pining  to  escape 
it.  Thus  are  our  cities  overgrown  and  bloated  with  a  re 
dundant,  thriftless  population,  who,  having  no  legitimate 
sphere  of  exertion,  underbid  each  other  for  employment,  and 
are  too  often  driven  by  want  and  despair  into  depraved  and 
forbidden  courses.  Talent,  knowledge,  and  skill,  which  are 
greatly  needed  in  the  sphere  of  rural  life,  crowd  and  jostle 
each  other  on  the  city's  pavements,  and  often  sell  to  Capital 
for  a  month's  livelihood  some  happy  invention  or  combination 
which  should  have  insured  a  competence  for  life.  Alas  for 
human  frailty,  beset  by  ravening  hunger  or  pinching  frost !  — 
full-pursed  depravity  is  enabled  oft  to  drive  still  harder 
bargains  than  these ! 

Facts  abundantly  indicate  that  the  actual  position  of  the 
cultivator  is  not  what  it  might  and  should  be.  He  ought  to 
be,  by  science  and  wisdom,  the  master  of  the  elements,  yet  is, 
through  ignorance  and  imperfection,  their  slave.  The  floods 
which  should  fertilize  his  soil,  often  wash  it  away,  and  with 
it  the  fruits  of  his  labor.  The  winds,  which  should  drive 
the  plow  through  his  naked  fields,  or  spend  their  force  on 
smoothing  away  any  undesired  irregularities  of  surface,  do 
far  oftener  prostrate  his  granaries  and  fences.  The  electric 
currents,  which  should  push  forward  his  vegetation  with  a 
rapidity  and  vigor  unimagined  save  by  the  initiated  few,  are 
left  to  shatter  his  house  or  barn,  perhaps  only  destroying 
therewith  his  annual  harvest,  perhaps  finishing  himself 
and  his  labors.  Instead  of  being,  as  in  Manufactures  or 
Navigation,  the  director  and  controller  of  the  blind  forces  of 
Nature  to  his  own  use  and  profit,  the  Farmer  allows  these  to 
escape  him  in  uselessness  or  mischief,  and  feebly,  inefficiently 
supplies  their  place  by  overtaxing  his  owa»sinews.  Hence 
weariness,  disgust,  and  meager  recompense ;  hence  the 


LIFE  — THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  65 

accomplished  or  longed-for  escape  of  countless  thousands 
from  the  paltry  drudgery  of  the  hoe  and  spade  to  the  larger 
hopes  and  more  intellectual  sphere  of  effort  elsewhere 
afforded. 

It  is  the  mission  of  our  age  to  regenerate  and  dignify 
Agriculture,  by  rendering  it  practically  an  intellectual  and 
expansive  vocation.  Within  its  sphere  lie  yet  enfolded 
the  germs  of  future  conquests  far  mightier  and  nobler  than 
those  of  any  Caesar  or  Napoleon.  These  petty,  cramped 
enclosures,  these  deforming,  dwarfing  fences,  which  render 
the  landscape  so  insipid  and  characterless,  shall  yet  be  swept 
away  by  the  genius  of  Improvement,  through  the  application 
of  the  truths  of  Science  to  the  daily  economies  of  life.  Then 
the  brook  shall  no  more  brawl  idly  down  the  declivity  while 
the  laborer  delves  wearily  yet  ineffectively  by  its  side,  and 
Man  will  no  more  stoop  doggedly  to  burdens  which  the  free 
breezes  would  gladly  bear  to  their  appointed  destination. 
We  stand  but  on  the  threshold  of  the  world  of  Science  made 
practical,  and  our  vision  rests  on  and  is  bounded  by  its  appli 
cation  to  Manufactures  alone.  Wondrous  as  is  the  progress 
which  half  a  century  has  witnessed  in  this  direction,  it  is  as 
nothing  to  what  remains  to  be  accomplished  for  the  whole 
circle  of  Human  Industry,  and  especially  in  the  department 
of  Agriculture,  to  which  nearly  all  the  Natural  Sciences,  as 
well  as  Mechanical  forces,  shall  yet  advantageously  minister. 
The  farmer  of  the  coming  age — master  and  manager  of 
steam  rather  than  tyrant  of  enslaved,  toil-worn,  hungry  beasts, 
—  shall  not  need  painfully  to  heave  the  ponderous  rock  from 
its  base,  but  will  rather,  by  some  simple  chemical  solvent, 
pulverize  it  to  fertile  dust  where  it  lies.  To  his  informed, 
observant  mind,  the  changes  of  temperature,  the  succession 
of  calm  and  storm,  shall  bring  no  surprise,  no  disaster,  being 
unerringly  foreseen  and  profited  by  like  the  rotation  of  the 
seasons.  For  his  behoof  the  plow  shall  pursue  its  unguided, 
resistless  course  across  the  spacious  landscape,  and  the 
6* 


66  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

following  seed  shall  fall  regularly  into  its  appointed  place, 
without  need  of  special  oversight  or  guidance.  The  in 
equalities  of  surface  and  of  soil  shall  disappear  before  the 
steady,  unexpensive  action  of  natural  forces  thereon  ;  steam 
giants  shall  loosen  and  deepen  the  soil  to  any  extent  de 
sirable,  sweeping  down  forests  as  a  fire  does  the  dry  grass 
of  the  prairies,  and  extracting  roots  like  a  tornado.  There 
is  no  practical  limit  to  the  powers  at  all  times  presenting  them 
selves  to  do  the  bidding  of  Man,  had  he  but  the  talent  and 
genius  to  adapt  and  apply  them.  Nature  wills  that  the  plow, 
the  sythe,  the  axe,  the  harvest-wain,  shall  move  forward  on 
their  proper  errands,  as  irresistibly,  inexpensively  as  the  saw, 
the  throstle,  the  shuttle,  and  with  equally  beneficent  results. 
Actually,  the  capacity  of  human  labor  to  produce  fabrics  has 
been  increased  some  twenty-fold  within  the  last  century, 
while  in  its  application  to  rural  pursuits  it  has  not  been  more 
than  doubled,  if  so  much.  This  disparity  is  not  necessary, 
but  factitious,  and  must  be  overcome.  Half  a  century  will 
suffice  to  bring  forward  Agriculture  to  the  point  which 
Manufacture  has  now  reached,  banishing  for  ever  the  still 
lingering  fears  of  occasional  famine,  and  rendering  food  as 
abundant  and  accessible  as  the  common  elements. 

Yet  the  Farmer's  vocation  needs  something  more  than  in 
creased  efficiency  and  mastery  of  Nature  to  reconcile  it 
with  a  lofty  and  generous  ideal.  We  need  a  change  in  the 
man  himself,  and  in  those  circumstances  which  vitally  affect 
his  character.  He  is  now  too  nearly  an  isolated  being.  His 
world  is  a  narrow  circle  of  material  objects  he  calls  his  own, 
within  which  he  is  an  autocrat,  though  out  of  it  little  more 
than  a  cipher.  His  associates  are  few,  and  these  mainly 
rude  dependents  and  inferiors.  His  daily  discourse  savors 
of  beeves  and  swine,  and  the  death  of  a  sheep  on  his  farm 
creates  more  sensation  in  his  circle  than  the  fall  of  a  hero 
elsewhere.  Of  the  refining,  harmonizing,  expanding  in 
fluences  of  general  society,  he  has  little  experience.  For 


LIFE  — THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  67 

extensive  travel  or  intercourse  with  minds  which  have 
profited  by  a  large  comparison  of  nations,  climates,  customs, 
he  has  but  rare  opportunities.  The  family  circle,  precious 
as  are  its  enjoyments,  and  healthful  as  are  its  proper 
influences,  is  not  alone  sufficient  to  form  the  noblest 
character  or  satisfy  all  the  aspirations  of  the  human  heart. 
The  lofty,  ingenuous  soul  revolts  at  the  idea  of  wearing  out  its 
earthly  career  mainly  in  the  rearing  of  brutes  and  the  com 
posting  of  manures,  shut  out  from  all  free  range  of  congenial 
associates  and  obedience  to  nobler  impulses.  It  feels  that 
a  human  life  is  ill  spent  in  the  mere  production  of  corn  and 
cattle.  Hence  our  youth  of  largest  promise  too  generally 
escape  from  the  drudgery  of  their  paternal  acres  to  court  the 
equally  repulsive  slavery  of  the  office  or  the  counter  —  not 
because  it  is  preferable  in  itself,  but  because  it  gives  scope  to 
larger  hopes,  suggests  larger  possibilities,  and  at  all  events  is 
supposed  to  afford  larger  opportunities  for  observation,  for 
intellectual  development,  and  choice  of  companions.  Here 
is  one  cause  of  the  inferior  development  and  progress  in 
Agriculture,  as  compared  with  other  departments  of  industrial 
effort.  The  genius  and  intellect  which  should  have  taught 

o 

us  to  *  speed  the  plow'  with  Titanic  energy  has  been  attracted 
to  other  vocations,  leaving  that  of  the  old  patriarchs  as  sterile 
as  some  bald  mountain  on  which  every  rain  levies  tribute  to 
fertilize  the  surrounding  valleys.  Not  till  the  solitary  farm 
house,  with  its  half-dozen  denizens,  its  mottled  array  of  mere 
patches  of  auxiliary  acres,  its  petty  flock  and  herd,  its 
external  decorations  of  piggery,  stable-yard,  etc.,  making  it 
the  focus  of  all  noisome  and  villainous  odors,  shall  have  been 
replaced  by  some  arrangement  more  genial,  more  expansive, 
more  social  in  its  aspects,  affording  larger  scope  to  aspiration 
and  a  wider  field  for  the  infinite  capacities  of  man's  nature, 
may  we  hope  to  arrest  the  tendencies  which  make  the  farmer 
too  often  a  boor  or  a  clod,  and  the  cultivation  of  the  earth  a 
mindless,  repugnant  drudgery,  when  it  should  be  the  noblest, 


68  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

the  most  intellectual  and  the  most  desired  of  human  employ 
ments. 

But  in  truth  the  whole  atmosphere  of  our  better  education, 
the  influence  of  our  higher  seminaries,  tends  to  unfit  our 
noblest  youth  for  lives  of  peaceful  industry,  and  win  away 
their  affections  therefrom.  The  young  man  acquires  or  is 
given  an  education,  as  it  is  technically  called,  in  order  that 
he  may  be  something  else  and  better  than  a  farmer.  The 
mother's  darling,  the  hope  and  pride  of  the  family,  must  be 
fitted  for  some  career  less  insignificant  and  slavish  than  that 
of  his  progenitors.  So  the  cracked  sugar-bowl  is  relieved 
of  its  slowly-gathered  dollars,  and  the  budding  genius  is 
sent  to  the  academy  and  thence  to  college,  not  with  a  view 
to  his  becoming  a  larger,  better  man  in  any  abstract  sense  — 
still  less  with  the  remotest  notion  of  making  him  a  better 
farmer — but  purely  that  he  may  escape  his  father's  grovel 
ing,  despised  vocation,  and  become  something  nobler  and 
more  exalted  than  a  tiller  of  the  soil.  His  first  lessons  of 
contempt  for  all  the  ways  of  manual  industry  are  therefore 
taken  by  the  paternal  fireside ;  and  these  are  quickly  rein 
forced  by  those  of  the  University,  with  its  courtly  airs  and 
lily  fingers.  With  all  the  wisdom  hoarded  in  and  dispensed 
from  those  classic  halls,  the  wisdom  of  God  in  making  Man 
dependent  for  the  satisfaction  of  his  most  inevitable  wants  on 
his  habitual  toil — the  wisdom  which  decrees,  'In  the  sweat 
of  thy  face  shalt  thou  eat  bread' — is  not  perceived  and  ac 
knowledged.  Under  the  auspices  of  a  President  and 
Faculty,  whose  lives  have  almost  necessarily  been  given  to 
books,  to  ideas  and  words,  to  the  exclusion  of  manual  exer 
tion — with  whom  the  extraction  of  roots  has  uniformly  been 
a  mathematical,  never  a  horticultural  process  —  half  of  whom 
are  paying,  through  dyspepsia,  gout,  or  nervous  derangement, 
the  penalty  of  violating  the  law  aforesaid  —  the  youth  enters 
upon  his  new  career.  Should  he  cherish  some  lingering 
regard  for  that  wise  ordinance  which  demands  labor  of  all  as 


LIFE  — THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  GO 

the  inexorable  condition  of  health  and  vigor,  he  speedily 
succumbs  to  the  genus  loci — the  atmosphere  and  the  senti 
ment  which  surround  him.  The  student  in  one  of  our  pop 
ular  colleges  must  be  daring  and  wilful  who  would  venture 
even  to  saw  or  carry  up  his  own  wood,  however  convinced 
of  the  wholesomeness  or  necessity  of  such  occupation.  But 
instead  of  work  he  is  admonished  to  avail  himself  of  that 
vague,  illegitimate  something  —  or  more  commonly  nothing 
—  termed  (after  the  similitude  of  Bottom's  dream)  Exercise, 
which,  to  a  prisoner  chained  to  a  dungeon  wall,  is  very  com 
mendable.  And  tnus,  giving  some  ten  hours  per  day  to 
study,  as  many  to  food  and  rest,  and  the  balance  to  recrea 
tions  which  are  recreations  only  and  hardly,  the  divorce  of 
Learning  from  Labor  —  of  Science  from  Practice  —  of  Man 
the  Thinker  from  Man  the  Worker  —  is'  rendered  complete, 
and  the  educated  youth  goes  out  into  the  world  to  preach, 
or  plead,  or  physic,  with  such  success  as  may  attend  him, 
but  with  an  implanted,  usually  inveterate  repugnance  to  regu 
lar  Manual  Labor  in  all  its  departments — a  feeling  that  his 
position  is  above  it,  and  that  he  would  be  degraded  by  de 
scending  to  it — a  fixed  resolution  to  avoid  it  evermore  if 
possible.  The  evil  consequences  of  this  mistake  are  more 
numerous  than  could  be  compressed  into  a  volume.  The 
young  physician  or  attorney  who  has  spent  his  last  shilling, 
and  perhaps  incurred  onerous  debts,  in  pursuing  his  studies, 
must  not  devote  his  leisure  hours,  while  awaiting  the  slow 
approaches  of  business,  to  downright,  practical  labor  in  the 
fields  or  workshops  around  him,  where  other  men  work  and 
earn,  although  his  circumstances  pressingly  require  and  his 
health  might  be  re-established  by  such  a  course.  -  Should  he 
do  so,  he  would  be  adjudged  sordid  or  mean-spirited,  and 
his  attempt  to  establish  himself  professionally  a  conceded 
failure.  But  far  worse  than  this  are  the  jealousy  and  aver 
sion  aroused  in  the  breasts  of  the  working  class  by  the  visible 
repugnance  to  and  disdain  of  their  pursuits  by  the  educated, 


70  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

and  the  desire  evinced  to  keep  the  intellectual  distinction  of 
caste  as  broad  and  rigid  as  possible.  Hence,  in  part,  the 
failure  of  the  liberally  educated  to  exert  their  due  influence 
over  the  opinions  and  course  of  the  more  numerous  classes 
— the  want  of  any  quick  and  cordial  sympathy  between  the 
learned  and  the  unlearned,  as  members  of  the  same  social 
body.  In  fact,  the  common  impulse  of  the  larger  mass  is  to 
oppose  rather  than  support  whatever  the  more  fortunate  and 
better  informed  appear  to  favor — a  most  deplorable  and 
calamitous  impulse,  especially  in  a  Republic.  We  must 
learn  to  vanquish  this,  and  the  removal  of  its  cause  is  its  only 
effectual  remedy. 

Bear  with  one  more  illustration  of  the  pernicious  con 
trast  created  in  thB  unfolding  mind  between  the  ideas 
awakened  by  our  present  or  indeed  any  thorough  course  of 
Intellectual  Culture,  and  the  pursuits  of  gainful  Industry,  as 
they  appear  and  are  carried  on  around  us.  An  ardent,  ingen 
uous,  impressible  youth,  leaves  his  parental  fireside  for  the 
academy  and  college,  where  he  is  made  master  of  the  Dead 
Languages  and  their  rich  treasures — becomes  acquainted 
with  Classical  Antiquity,  and  imbued  with  its  spirit.  But 
of  that  Antiquity,  History  has  borne  down  to  us  only  or 
mainly  the  bloody  aspect — it  delights  in  and  expatiates  upon 
the  doings  of  daring  and  violent  men.  The  victory  of  Marathon 
—  the  defence  of  Thermopylae — the  passage  of  the  Granicus 
— the  exploits  of  Achilles,  Alexander,  Hannibal,  and 
Caesar — these  and  the  like  are  the  staple  of  the  student's 
daily  contemplations  and  nightly  dreams.  Regarding  the 
really  great  events  in  man's  annals — the  first  use  of  Iron, 
the  Invention  of  the  Plow,  the  Spindle,  the  Loom,  the  Mari 
ner's  Compass,  History  is  almost  if  not  entirely  silent. 
Archimedes  is  rescued  from  oblivion  by  the  accident  of  his 
connection  with  the  defence  of  Syracuse  — while  the  inven 
tion  even  of  Printing,  so  recent  and  so  mighty  a  trans- 


LIFE— THE  ACTUAL  AND  THE  IDEAL,  71 

former  of  the  mental  world,  is  claimed  by  different  nations 
for  different  and  still  obscure  men,  though  we  know  well 
who  first  compounded  Gunpowder,  where  Cannon  were 
first  used,  and  where  the  Bayonet  was  invented.  The 
most  peaceful  and  gentle  youth  is  thus  insensibly  taught,  by 
the  influences  surrounding  him  in  school  and  college,  to  re 
gard  Fame  with  a  passionate  longing,  from  observing  that  the 
heroes  of  History  have  been  and  still  are  the  theme  of  study 
and  admiration  in  every  seminary  throughout  the  civilized 
world,  and  that  upon  their  lives  as  models  the  characters  of 
the  educated  class  in  all  time  are  molded.  Not  merely  the 
love  of  Fame,  for  itself,  is  thus  taught,  but  that  Fame  is  a 
child  of  Courts,  and  Camps,  and  Cabinets,  visiting  rarely 
or  never  the  humble  dwellings  wherein  unselfish  Philan 
thropy  labors  to  soften  anguish  and  remove  from  lowly  souls 
the  stains  of  Vice  and  Sin.  At  length,  from  years  of  fasci 
nating  familiarity  with  whatever  is  most  dazzling  and  theatri 
cal  in  human  annals,  the  young  man  is  at  once  recalled  to 
the  practical  realities  of  life  —  he  has  finished  his  education 
—  at  least,  his  studies.  He  reenters  the  work-day  world  a 
very  different  being  from  that  which  he  left  it.  He  has  now  to 
choose  a  pursuit  and  a  sphere  of  life-long  effort.  The  range 
for  selection  is  wide  ;  for,  if  his  education  has  been  real  and 
thorough,  he  is  by  it  better  qualified  for  any  useful  vocation. 
But  how  tame,  how  monotonous,  how  frivolous,  seem  the 
common  ways  of  mere  productive  labor,  to  a  mind  so  trained 
and  occupied  !  How  insipid,  after  years  of  battling  and  con 
quering  with  Scipio  or  Maryborough,  to  come  down  to  mere 
mowing  and  gardening  with  Jones  and  Jenkins  !  The  im 
patient,  aspiring  soul  revolts  at  it — not  so  much  that  the 
work  itself  is  fatiguing  and  repugnant,  as  that  it  seems  unwor 
thy  to  engross  a  lifetime  —  a  glaring  misuse  and  waste  of 
its  capacious,  sharpened  faculties.  Nor  is  this  feeling  con 
fined  to  the  graduates  of  our  universities.  From  every 
country  village,  every  rural  hamlet,  the  better  class  of  youth 


72  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

are  fleeing,  they  care  not  whither,  to  escape  the  insupport 
able  exactions  of  a  life  of  toil  which  has  ceased  to  bear  due 
relations  to  or  satisfy  the  wants  of  their  enkindled  souls.  In 
vain  do  plodding,  old-school  fathers  grumble  at  the  wayward 
and  preposterous  ambition  of  their  children  —  in  vain  do  they 
attribute  their  perversity  to  laziness  or  folly,  and  wish  '  the 
march  of  Mind,'  would  keep  away  from  honest  poor  men's 
houses,  and  not  spoil  their  sons.  The  simple  truth  is, 
that  the  Intellectual  Culture  of  our  age  has  outgrown  its 
Physical  and  Social  Progress,  creating  anarchy  and  confu 
sion.  Idle  is  all  grumbling  at  or  lamenting  this  advance  — 
the  shadow  will  not  go  back  on  the  dial.  What  we  have  to 
do  is  not  to  draw  back  the  van,  but  to  bring  up  the  rear. 
We  must  renovate  and  reanimate  our  Industry,  by  bringing 
to  bear  upon  its  processes  all  the  powers  of  Science,  all  the 
forces  of  Nature,  all  the  vast  economies  of  Combination. 
We  must  call  on  the  college,  the  closet,  the  office,  to  send 
out  their  ablest  and  wisest  to  lead  the  advance  of  the  grand 
army  of  Industrial  Progress,  as  its  engineers,  staff,  and  offi 
cers  of  the  line.  We  must  replace  the  grim  Knights  of  old 
War  with  a  Chivalry  of  Industry,  as  honored  and  beloved  as 
any  Knightly  Order,  and  infinitely  more  deserving  of  honor 
than  the  best.  We  must  rearouse  and  redirect  that  enthu 
siasm  which  for  centuries  precipitated  myriads  after  myriads 
of  Christendom's  best  and  bravest  to  perish  by  sword  or 
famine  on  the  rocky  wastes  of  Palestine,  battling  to  the  last 
to  rescue  the  Redeemer's  sepulchre  from  the  defiling  tread 
of  the  Infidel,  and  must  bring  its  compact,  resistless 
phalanxes  to  bear  upon  all  the  physical  and  tangible  causes 
of  Man's  degradation  and  suffering.  Guided  by  Science, 
impelled  by  a  lofty  devotion  to  Human  Good,  sustained  by 
the  sympathies  and  supplies  of  the  whole  civilized  world,  let 
us  hope  to  see  the  vast  armament  of  this  new  Chivalry  ad 
vance  to  the  draining  of  pestilent  marshes  by  a  single  week's 
animated,  arduous  exertion  —  a  triumph  nobler  than  any 


LIFE  — THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  73 

Cannae  or  Waterloo  —  the  reclamation  of  swamps,  deserts, 
and  sterile  regions,  until  Sahara  shall  rejoice  once  more  in 
verdure  and  fragrance,  the  Campagna  become  a  garden,  and 
stately  forests  belt  the  vast,  bare  plains  which  stretch  away 
from  either  declivity  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  Of  the  phys 
ical  improvement,  whether  as  regards  fertility  or  accessibility, 
whereof  the  Earth  is  susceptible,  we  have  begun  to  entertain 
some  glimmering  notion  ;  but  of  the  facility  with  which  Sci 
ence,  Experience,  and  Combined  Effort  shall  enable  us  to 
effect  this  improvement,  no  adequate  idea  has  yet  been 
formed.  The  true  idea,  once  formed  and  disseminated,  will 
but  briefly  precede  the  consummation. 

Enough,  for  the  occasion,  of  the  definitive  and  the  critical. 
Let  us  bestow  a  few  moments  in  closing  on  some  broader, 
more  animating  aspects  of  Life  in  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

Say  what  we  will  and  justly  may  of  the  incurable  depravity 
of  Man,  as  evinced  in  the  universality  of  Sin  and  Crime,  this 
world  is  better  and  more  hopeful  than  it  has  been.  The 
robber  and  the  murderer  still  skulk  and  prowl  among  us,  in 
sulting  the  lone  majesty  of  Night  with  revealments  of  their 
hideous  presence,  but  Murder  in  the  face  of  Day  and  Heaven 
—  the  wholesale  butchery  of  Nations,  the  robbery  of  Cities 
and  Provinces  —  is  no  longer  perpetrated  without  shame  nor 
witnessed  without  indignant  horror.  The  stifling  to  death 
of  a  few  hundred  Arabs  in  a  cave,  though  shielded  by  the 
panoply  of  undoubted  and  relentless  war,  shocks  the  sensi 
bilities  of  Christendom,  and  all  apologies  are  instinctively 
rejected  as  adding  sophistry  to  crime.  The  world  regards 
admiringly  the  protracted  defense  of  their  homes  and  hearths 
by  the  bold  mountaineers  of  Caucasus,  wishing  them  a  trium 
phant  deliverance  from  the  toils  of  their  mighty  oppressor, 
and  every  blow  well  struck  at  the  minions  of  his  power 
thrills  with  rapture  the  general  heart.  For  Poland,  the  un- 


74  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

fortunate,  betrayed,  crushed  and  bleeding,  the  tears  of  the 
nations  flow  in  rivers,  and  the  fervent  prayers  of  sympathi 
zing,  sorrowing  millions  ascend  unceasingly  to  God.  And 
even  Ireland,  for  seven  centuries  the  prey  of  Domestic  trea 
son  and  Foreign  rapine,  prostrate  and  trampled  beneath  the 
heel  of  a  double  tyranny  of  Sword  and  Creed,  at  last  lifts  her 
eyes  in  hope  and  mute  supplication,  and,  discarding  the  gory 
weapons  of  ruffianism  and  murder,  trusts  her  cause  wholly 
to  Humanity  and  to  God  —  even  her  sublime  but  less  im 
posing  appeal  begins  to  be  heeded  and  felt ;  it  melts  the 
hard  crust  of  sectarian  prejudice  and  hatred  —  it  touches  the 
souls  of  the  generous  and  manly  —  and  the  glad  shout  of 
Earth's  enraptured  millions  shall  hail  the  swiftly  hastening 
hour  of  her  emancipation. 

Nor  am  I  discouraged  by  the  fact  that  Kings  and  Courts 
still  plot  against  Liberty  and  Justice,  or  even  that  Nations, 
blinded  by  rapacity  or  ambition,  are  led  into  the  commission 
of  gigantic  crimes.  I  see  also  that  these  crimes,  if  not  less 
atrocious  than  formerly,  are  less  frequent,  less  unblushing,  and 
require  to  be  sugared  o'er  with  sonorous,  captivating  phrases, 
indicating  a  devotion  to  Truth  and  Good.  To  steal  provinces 
for  the  sake  of  stealing  or  of  enjoying  them  would  not  pass 
uncensured  now,  as  in  the  days  of  Xerxes,  or  Norman  Wil 
liam,  or  Prussian  Frederick.  It  must  be  styled  tranquiliz- 
ing  a  frontier,  or  putting  an  end  to  anarchy,  or  establishing 
justice,  or  extending  the  blessings  of  freedom,  or  something 
of  the  sort.  Hypocrisy,  that  homage  paid  by  Vice  to  Virtue, 
at  least  testifies  the  existence  of  that  virtue  without  which  the 
homage  would  be  vain.  In  a  former  age,  civilized  men  uncere 
moniously  robbed  savages  of  their  possessions  for  God's  sake 
and  kept  them  for  their  own.  Now  it  is  deemed  meet  and 
decorous  to  incur  the  expense  of  making  some  few  of  the 
intended  victims  thoroughly  insensible  from  strong  drink, 
and  thus  procuring  what  can  afterward  be  pronounced  their 
signatures  to  a  treaty  of  cession,  surrendering  lands  which 


LIFE  — THE  ACTUAL  AND  THE  IDEAL.  75 

they  had  no  more  right  to  sell  away  from  their  brethren  and 
their  children  than  to  sell  the  waters  and  the  sky.  And, 
with  all  this  formality  and  seeming,  the  operation  is  often 
deemed  imperfect  unless  sanctified  by  the  presence  and  ac 
tive  participation  of  some  Christian  divine.  These  little 
attentions  to  the  unities  and  proprieties,  which  the  thought 
less  would  pass  unheeded  or  with  a  sneer  of  contempt,  are 
indeed  cheering  signs  of  Human  Progress.  They  demon 
strate  the  existence  of  an  awakening  though  still  drugged 
and  drowsy  National  and  Universal  Conscience.  They 
irradiate  by  contrast  the  raven  darkness,  unabashed  ferocity 
and  unbridled  lust  of  Man's  earlier  career.  The  light  they 
cast  on  the  page  of  History  heralds  the  dawn  of  a  nobler  and 
grander  era,  in  which  nations  shall  realize  that  for  them  no 
more  than  for  individuals  is  there  any  possible  escape  from 
the  inflexibility  of  God's  Providence,  which  steadily  puts 
aside  all  pretences,  all  shams,  and  looks  intently  into  the  im 
pulse  and  essence  of  every  action,  awarding  to  each  the 
exact  and  inexorable  recompense  of  its  merits.  In  the  light 
of  that  era,  Virtue  will  walk  abroad  unshielded  by  Force, 
unindebted  to  Opinion,  winning  all  to  obey  her  dictates  if 
not  from  intrinsic  love  of  her,  then  from  love  of  happiness 
and  themselves. 

But  this,  though  an  effective  defence  against  wrong-doing, 
can  never  be  the  true  impulse  to  a  life  of  active,  positive 
goodness.  That  virtue  which  is  based  on  a  conviction  of 
the  advantage  of  virtue  as  a  business  investment  will  naturally 
waste  too  much  time  in  calculating  chances,  to  be  of  great 
value  as  a  practical  incitement  to  deeds.  We  need  a  loftier 
Ideal  to  nerve  us  for  heroic  lives.  Only  on  forgetfulness 
of  Self,  or  rather  on  a  consciousness  that  we  are  all  but  motes 
ia  the  beam  whose  sun  is  God,  drops  in  the  rivulet  whose 
ocean  is  Humanity,  can  our  souls  be  molded  into  con 
formity  with  the  loftiest  ideal  of  our  race.  To  know  and  feel 
our  nothingness  without  regretting  it ;  to  deem  fame,  riches. 


76  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

personal  happiness,  but  shadows  of  which  Human  Good  is 
the  substance — to  welcome  Pain,  Privation,  Ignominy,  so 
that  the  sphere  of  Human  Knowledge,  the  empire  of  Virtue, 
be  thereby  extended  —  such  is  the  soul's  temper  in  which  the 
Heroes  of  the  Coming  Age  shall  be  cast.  To  realize  pro 
foundly  that  the  individual  is  nothing,  the  universal  every 
thing —  to  feel  nothing  a  calamity  whereby  the  sum  of 
human  virtue  or  happiness  is  increased,  this  is  the  truest 
wisdom.  When  the  stately  monuments  of  mightiest  con 
querors  shall  have  become  shapeless  and  forgotten  ruins,  the 
humble  graves  of  Earth's  Howards  and  Frys  shall  still  be 
freshened  by  the  tears  of  fondly  admiring  millions,  and  the 
proudest  epitaph  shall  be  the  simple  entreaty, 

'  Write  me  as  one  who  loved  his  fellow-men/ 

Say  not  that  I  thus  condemn  and  would  annihilate 
Ambition.  The  love  of  approbation,  of  esteem,  of  true 
glory,  is  a  noble  incentive,  and  should  be  cherished  to  the 
end.  But  the  ambition  which  points  the  way  to  fame  over 
torn  limbs  and  bleeding  hearts  —  which  joys  in  the  Tartarean 
smoke  of  the  battle-field  and  the  desolating  tramp  of  the  war- 
horse —  that  ambition  is  worthy  only  of  'archangel  ruined.' 
To  make  one  conqueror's  reputation,  at  least  one  hundred 
thousand  bounding,  joyous,  sentient  beings  must  be  trans 
formed  into  writhing  and  hideous  fragments  —  must  perish 
untimely  by  deaths  of  agony  and  horror,  leaving  half  a 
million  widows  and  orphans  to  bewail  their  loss  in  anguish 
and  destitution.  This  is  too  mighty,  too  awful  a  price  to  be 
paid  for  the  fame  of  any  hero,  from  Nimrod  to  Wellington. 
True  fame  demands  no  such  sacrifices  of  others ;  it  requires 
us  to  be  reckless  of  the  outward  well-being  of  but  one.  It 
exacts  no  hecatomb  of'  victims  for  each  triumphal  pile  ;  for 
the  more  who  covet  and  seek  it  the  easier  and  more  abun 
dant  is  the  success  of  each  and  all.  With  souls  of  the 


LIFE  — THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  77 

celestial  temper,  each  human  life  might  be  a  triumph,  which 
angels  would  lean  from  the  skies  delighted  to  witness  and 
admire. 

And,  beyond  doubt,  the  loftiest  ambition  possible  to  us 
finds  its  fruition  in  perfect,  simple  Manhood.  A  robber  may 
be  a  great  warrior;  a  pirate  an  admiral  ;  a  dunce  a  king  ;  a 
slimy  intriguer  a  President ;  but  to  be  a  thorough  and  true 
Man,  that  is  an  aspiration  which  repels  all  accident  or 
seeming.  And  let  us  not  fear  that  such  are  too  common  to 
be  distinguished  or  famous.  Could  there  appear  among  us 
a  realization  of  the  full  idea  of  Manhood  —  no  mere  general, 
nor  statesman,  nor  devotee,  but  a  complete  and  genuine  Man 
—  he  need  not  walk  naked  or  in  fantastic  garb  to  gather  all 
eyes  upon  him.  The  very  office-seekers  would  forget  for  a 
moment  their  fawning,  and  prowling,  their  coaxing  and 
slandering,  to  gather  eagerly,  though  awed,  around  him  to 
inquire  from  what  planet  he  had  descended.  No  merman  nor 
centaur  giraffe  nor  chimpanzee,  mastodon  nor  megalosaurus, 
ever  excited  half  the  curiosity  which  would  be  awakened 
and  requited  by  the  presence  among  us  of  a  whole  and  com 
plete  Man.  And  to  form  this  character,  inadequate  as  have 
been  all  past  approaches  to  it  by  unaided  human  energy,  the 
elements  are  visibly  preparing.  Men  are  becoming  slowly 
but  sensibly  averse  to  whatever  erects  barriers  between  them 
and  cuts  them  into  fragments  and  particles  of  Manhood.  The 
priest  in  his  surplice,  the  militaire  in  his  regimentals,  the 
duke  under  his  coronet,  all  begin  to  feel  rather  uneasy  and 
shame-faced  if  confronted  with  a  throng  of  irreverent  citizens, 
hurrying  to  and  fro,  intent  on  their  various  errands.  Among 
a  corps,  a  bevy  of  his  own  order,  the  farce  may  still  be 
played  by  each  with  decorous  propriety,  but  apart  from  these 
it  palls  and  becomes  a  heaviness.  Day  by  day  it  is  more 
and  more  clearly  felt  that  the  world  is  outgrowing  the  dolls 
and  rattles  of  its  childhood,  and  more  and  more  disdains  to 
be  treated  childishly.  Direct,  earnest  speech,  with  useful 


78  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

deeds  evincing  lofty  purpose  —  these  are  more  and  more  in 
sisted  on,  and  whatever  lacks  them  is  quietly  left  to  perish. 
-An  undeserved  popularity,  a  sham  celebrity,  may  still  be  got 
up  by  due  incantations  ;  but  frailer,  than  the  spider's  gos 
samer,  the  first  breath  resolves  them  into  their  essential 
nothingness.  Gas  to  gas,  they  mingle  with  the  blue  sur 
rounding  ether,  and  neither  its  serenity  nor  its  purity  is 
visibly  affected  by  the  infusion. 

Yes,  a  brighter  day  dawns  for  us,  sinning  and  suffering 
children  of  Adam.  Wiser  in  its  very  follies,  less  cruel  and 
wanton  even  in  its  crimes,  our  Race  visibly  progresses 
toward  a  nobler  and  happier  realization  of  its  capacities  and 
powers.  Compared  century  with  century,  this  progress  is 
not  so  palpable,  since  what  is  an  age  to  individuals,  is  but 
a  moment  in  the  lifetime  of  the  Race  ;  but,  viewed  on  a 
larger  scale,  the  advance  becomes  cheeringly  evident. 
Washington  is  a  nobler  exponent  of  humanity  than  Epami- 
nondas  or  Scipio ;  La  Fayette  eclipses  Phocion  ;  and  Burke 
has  a  larger  nature,  a  more  universal  genius  than  Cicero. 
Wonderful  as  are  the  works  of  Homer,  they  bespeak  the 
splendid  barbarian,  the  thoroughly  developed  physical, 
animal  man  ;  but  their  range  of  imagination,  of  thought,  is 
infinitely  lower  and  narrower  than  Shakspeare's  ;  the  man 
they  depict  is  infinitely  poorer  and  more  dwarfed  than 
Goethe's,  and  I  dare  add  even  Byron's.  Compare  Achil 
les  with  Hamlet  or  Harold  ;  the  first  is  the  more  perfect 
of  his  kind,  but  of  nature  how  infinitely  grosser  and  less 
exalted  !  To  him  the  stars  are  noteworthy  but  as  battle- 
lanterns — they  enable  him  to  thrust  the  spear  with  deadlier 
aim  to  the  heart  of  his  enemy.  To  Harold,  the  bare  pres 
ence  of  the  stars,  '  so  wildly,  spiritually  bright,'  would  recall 
the  nothingness  of  terrestrial  aims  and  struggles — their 
searching  glances  would  instantly  rebuke  and  dethrone  the 
fell  appetite  for  slaughter,  so  that,  throwing  away  the  loath- 


LIFE  — THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  79 

some  implements  of  human  butchery,  he  would  stand  gazing 
intently  into  their  serene  deeps,  regardless  of  the  proximity, 
forgetful  of  the  existence  of  a  foe.  Say,  if  you  will  that  the 
former  is  more  natural,  I  care  not ;  in  the  universe  of  Mind 
there  are  scope  and  call  for  more  than  the  natural  —  for  the 
spiritual  and  celestial  also.  Never  are  we  so  truly  human  as 
when  we  most  daringly  transcend  all  the  vulgar  limitations 
of  Humanity  ;  and  thus  Hamlet,  who,  viewed  with  dispar 
aging  coldness  and  skepticism,  is  the  most  erratic  and 
improbable  creation  of  the  brain,  is  instinctively  recognized 
by  all  awakened  souls  as  a  veritable  man  and  a  brother. 
His  unfamiliarity  at  first  blush  accused  our  deficiencies,  not 
his  —  was  caused  by  his  combining  more  of  the  elements 
of  our  common  nature  than  we  had  been  accustomed  to 
see  embodied  and  developed  in  any  one  man.  Had  we 
but  known  ourselves,  Hamlet  had  never  seemed  to  us  a 
stranger. 

O 

The  ages  of  darkness  —  of  unconscious  wandering  from  the 
path  of  Right  and  Good  —  of  that  'ignorance'  which  we  are 
told  '  God  winked  at'  in  its  earlier  and  more  excusable 
manifestations  —  are  rapidly  passing  away.  That  generation 
is  not  yet  all  departed  which  witnessed  the  rise,  progress,  and 
termination  of  the  struggle  regarding  the  rightfulness  and 
legitimacy  of  the  African  Slave-Trade.  Commencing  in  the 
attacks  of  a  few  obscure  fanatics  on  the  usages,  maxims, 
gains  and  respectability  of  the  commercial  aristocracy  and 
sea-faring  chivalry  of  nearly  all  Christendom,  it  has  already 
become  a  struggle  between  nearly  all  that  same  Christendom 
converted,  and  a  few  abhorred,  hunted,  skulking  pirates. 
Can  any  man  rationally  doubt  that  the  discussion  of  Slavery 
itself,  which  had  a  similar  beginning,  is  destined  to  run  a 
like  career,  to  a  like  termination  ?  The  fact  that  the  latter 
is  the  more  strongly  entrenched  in  the  interest,  convenience, 
custom  and  seeming  necessity  of  the  superior  caste,  may 
somewhat  protract  the  struggle  ;  yet  on  the  other  hand  the 


80  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

contest  already  past,  the  victory  already  gained  in  a  kindred 
encounter,  immeasurably  diminish  the  difficulties  and  must 
abridge  the  duration  of  this.  Men  have  learned  and  tested 
the  applicability  of  moral  laws  to  general  and  public  as  well 
as  individual  and  private  relations  —  to  the  acts  of  commu 
nities  as  well  as  of  persons.  Can  any  suppose  that  the 
application  of  this  principle  is  to  cease  with  the  initial  case 
which  has  established  its  efficacy  and  value  ?  Far  from  it. 
We  see  it  now  operating  upon  rulers  and  nations,  to  restrain 
the  most  ambitious  and  blood-thirsty  from  war  by  a  power 
far  more  dreaded  than  that  of  hostile  bayonets.  We  see  it 
operating  at  home  in  the  Temperance  agitation  of  our  time, 
and  especially  that  regarding  the  rightfulness  of  the  traffic  in 
Intoxicating  Liquors.  W^hat  is  this  but  the  Slave-Trade 
question  over  again? — varied  in  form,  it  is  true,  but 
differing  nothing  in  substance.  The  essence  of  either  con 
troversy  regards  the  right  of  any  part  or  member  of  the 
Human  Family  to  promote  or  countenance  for  private  gain 
any  practice  or  business  whereby  others  are  naturally  de 
graded,  impoverished,  enslaved,  or  made  wretched.  Once 
determine  that  this  right  does  not  exist  in  any  one  case,  and 
the  principle  instantly  and  naturally  confronts  other  cases, 
and  insists  that  these  also  shall  be  tested  by  its  standard. 

Let  not  the  sensual  hope,  let  the  good  never  fear,  that  the 
vitality  of  this  principle  can  be  exhausted  while  moral  evil 
or  avoidable  suffering  shall  linger  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 
The  Reforms  which  have  not  yet  begun  to  be  prominent  are 
vaster  and  nobler  than  any  wrhich  have  thus  far  been  favored 
with  the  smiles,  or  even  the  frowns,  of  coteries  and  club- 
rooms.  The  world  drowsily  opens  its  eyes  and  yawns 
assent  to  the  truth  that  the  direct  enslavement  of  Man  is  re 
bellion  against  Him  who  in  His  wisdom  has  endowed  us  with 
faculties  and  desires,  with  the  development,  use,  and  health 
ful  satisfaction  whereof  the  inevitable  conditions  of  Slavery 
are  incompatible.  That  perfect  obedience  which  God  re- 


LIFE  — THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  81 

quires  can  rarely  be  comprehended,  and  still  more  rarely 
rendered,  by  him  who  is  born,  lives,  and  dies  the  absolute 
chattel  and  convenience  of  another.  And  this  truth  con 
demns  not  the  chattel  relation  only,  but  all  relations  in  which 
Service  degenerates  into  Servitude.  Wherever  one  human 
being  exists  mainly  for  the  convenience  and  advantage  of 
another,  or  of  others,  there  the  elemental  purpose,  the 
essential  economy  of  Providence  is  defied,  and,  for  the 
moment,  subverted.  Wherever  one  requires  of  others  more 
service  than  he  willingly  renders  in  turn,  requiting  it  not 
with  his  own  but  the  fruits  of  others'  exertion,  there  is  a 
principle  asserted  which  tends  to  bankrupt  the  Race  and 
defeat  the  highest  end  of  its  creation.  Wherever  one  fancies 
himself  exempted,  by  the  inheritance  or  acquirement  of 
wealth,  from  performing  his  fair  proportion  of  the  Labor  de 
manded  by  human  necessities,  there  is  one  whose  example 
justifies  the  slaveholder  on  his  couch,  the  absentee  landlord 
rioting  in  luxury  on  the  last  potato  of  starving  penury,  the 
coward  fleeing  from  the  post  of  danger  and  of  duty.  In  de 
frauding  his  kind  of  the  service  he  owes  them,  he  defrauds 
himself  of  the  health,  strength,  and  longevity,  which  were 
rightfully  his  portion  until  "  vilely  cast  away."  And  the 
physical  evils  of  luxury  and  sloth  are  but  faint  reflections  of 
the  moral.  Every  household  constructed  on  the  basis  of  a 
superior  and  an  inferior  caste  —  on  the  assumption  that  some 
of  us  were  born  to  wait  and  serve,  others  to  be  served  and 
waited  on  —  that  some  must  work  to  live,  while  others  may 
justly  live  without  working  —  the  former  being  the  less  and 
the  latter  the  more  honorable  class  —  Unit  household,  I  say, 
is  built  on  a  foundation  of  un-Christian  slavery  and  unmanly 
falsehood,  whose  tendencies  are  to  eye-service,  deceit, 
envy,  hatred,  sloth,  pride,  and  all  kindred  vices.  Not 
without  a  radical  reform  of  the  Household  is  any  real  ap 
proximation  of  the  careers  therein  commenced  to  the  Ideal 
of  a  True  Life  possible,  save  as  a  rare  exception  —  a  happy 


82  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

result  of  unobserved  but  potent  influences,  fortunately  con 
spiring  to  overrule  the  more  obvious  and  general  laws 
governing  the  formation  of  character.  If  we  are  educated 
slaves  or  enslavers,  we  shall  rarely  and  with  difficulty  out 
grow  our  early  lessons,  and  become  true  men  and  women. 

As  yet,  the  great  Reform  which  shall  abolish  all  Slavery, 
as  it  only  can  be  effectually,  really  abolished,  by  leaving 
none  coveting  the  position  of  a  master,  none  possessing  the 
soul  of  a  slave,  is  in  its  infancy,  silently  and  slowly  but  surely 
progressing  to  matured  energy  and  vigor.  ATTRACTIVE 
INDUSTRY,  the  dream  of  the  past  age,  the  aspiration  of  the 
present,  shall  be  the  fruition  and  joy  of  the  next.  The  re 
union  of  Desire  and  Duty,  divorced  and  warring  since  the 
Fall,  restores  Man  at  once  to  the  unchanging,  uncloying  bliss 
of  Eden.  That  this  is  a  Moral  renovation  is  indeed  most 
true,  but  false  is  the  deduction  that  it  is  wrought  or  endures 
regardless  of  Physical  conditions.  Idly  do  the  lips  of  the 
widow  murmur  expressions  of  contentment  and  thankfulness 
when  her  children  pine  for  bread  and  have  no  prospect  of 
procuring  it ;  vainly  does  the  forlorn  wretch  essay  to  thank 
that  Providence  whose  ways  he  can  not  fathom,  but  whose 
present  results  are  to  him  famine,  disease,  and  utter,  hopeless 
destitution.  Here  and  there  the  keen  eye  of  Faith  may 
pierce  the  deepest  gloom  of  the  Present,  and  rest  exultingly 
on  the  compensating  glories  of  the  Future  ;  but  such  are 
exceptions  to  the  general  law  which  renders  present  privation 
and  anguish  an  Aaron's  rod,  swallowing  up  all  thought,  over 
clouding  all  hope,  of  future  bliss.  We  must  know  what  hap 
piness  is,  ere  we  can  rightly  appreciate  the  prospect  of  it ; 
we  must  have  exemption  from  pressing  wants  of  the  body, 
ere  we  can  duly  heed  and  be  faithful  to  the  loftiest  prompt 
ings  of  the  soul.  The  individual  engrossed  in  a  constant  and 
arduous  struggle  for  daily  bread,  makes  slow  and  capricious 
progress  on  the  path  to  Heaven.  Those  who  can  not  obey 
the  Divine  precept,  "  Take  no  [anxious]  thought  for  the 


LIFE— THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL.  83 

morrow,"  can  hardly  hope  to  obey  any  precept  relating  to 
their  own  spiritual  growth  and  elevation.  Not  till  the  pressing 
demands  of  our  outward  and  bodily  nature  shall  have  been 
provided  for,  may  we  rationally  look  for  a  general  conformity 
of  our  Actual  State  to  the  Ideal  of  sentient,  intelligent 
being. 

That  the  Physical  conditions  of  a  calmer  and  nobler  exist 
ence  for  the  great  mass  of  mankind  are  slowly  but  surely 
preparing,  I  recognise  with  gladness  ;  I  will  not  doubt  that 
the  Moral  elements  are  also  commingling.  In  all  the  forms 
and  shows  of  present  and  threatening  Evil,  I  discern  the 
shadows  of  approaching  Good.  The  age  now  dawning  shall 
reap  in  gladness  the  fields  tearfully  sown  in  defiance  of  tem 
pests  of  contumely  and  reproach.  It  will  have  its  Statesmen, 
who  may  continue  to  serve  their  Nations  without  stooping  to 
flatter  their  worst  and  most  dangerous  passions  ;  orators, 
whose  trumpet-tones  shall  be  employed  to  chasten  and  rebuke 
whatever  is  selfish  in  the  thronging  multitudes  they  address, 
rather  than  impel  them  to  envy  and  hate  their  fellows ; 
teachers  of  religion,  meek,  earnest  followers  of  the  carpenter's 
son  of  Bethlehem  and  Paul  the  tent-maker,  who,  living,  or 
at  all  times  ready  to  live,  if  need  be,  by  the  labor  of  their 
own  hands,  shall  minister  to  God  in  houses  unpartitioned  to 
men,  asking  of  a  prospective  field  of  labor,  not  what  salary 
is  to  be  paid,  but  what  sin  is  to  be  cured,  and  setting  forth 
the  duties  and  reproving  the  delinquencies  of  Wealth,  as 
few  or  none  have  dared  to  do  since  He  who  had  not  where 
to  lay  His  head.  Under  such  faithful  ministrations,  the 
truth  must  soon  become  apparent  that  Riches  are  desirable 
only  to  widen  the  scope  and  enlarge  the  opportunities  of 
well-doing — that  they  impart  no  right  to  live  prodigally, 
selfishly,  or  ostentatiously  —  still  less  to  avoid  the  ways  of 
Industry  and  benign  Exertion.  With  wealth  thus  possessed 
and  employed,  vanish  at  once  the  privations  and  the  envious 


84  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

discontent  of  the  Poor — the  dreams  and  the  desire  of  Agra 
rian  equality  —  since  the  most  abject  must  then  recognise 
the  wisdom  and  beneficence  of  the  dispensation  which 
qualifies  some  to  be  the  almoners  and  benefactors  of  the  less 
gifted  or  provident  millions,  while  the  more  fortunate  would 
learn  to  feel,  in  extending  the  amplest  encouragement  and 
aid  to  the  lowly,  some  faint  reflection  of  the  rapture  of 
Creative  goodness.  Thus  harmonized  in  feeling,  exalted 
in  purpose,  convergent  in  effort,  the  re-united  Human 
Family  shall  move  on  to  greater  and  still  greater  triumphs 
over  Physical  obstruction,  Elementary  perversion,  and  Moral 
dissonance,  until  Evil  and  Anguish  shall  virtually  be  ban 
ished,  our  Earth  be  restored  to  its  primal  rank  among  the 
loyal  provinces  of  God's  empire,  and  Man,  made  '  a  little 
lower  than  the  angels,'  shall  realize  in  his  Actual  the  noblest, 
the  fairest  Ideal  of  Life. 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.  85 


III. 

THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER: 

A      LECTURE. 

I  STAXD  before  you  this  evening  to  adduce  some  consid 
erations  connected  with  the  right  formation  or  malformation 
of  the  Human  Character.  It  is  not  improbable  that  some  of 
the  views  which  to  my  mind  are  those  of  evident  truth  may 
to  some  among  you  wear  the  semblance  of  novelty  —  of 
extravagance  —  or,  more  strictly,  of  what  the  discreet  and 
proper  world  has  doomed  to  perdition  under  the  vague  but 
blighting  designation  of  Ultraism.  I  say  it  may  be  so,  be 
cause  I  am  aware  that  each  observing  soul  forms  a  world  of 
its  own,  or  at  least  establishes  its  own  stand-point  from  which 
to  look  abroad  on  the  universe  ;  while  the  infinitely  larger 
number  who  have  forfeited  by  non-use  their  right  of  indepen 
dent  thought  —  who,  never  venturing  a  glance  at  Nature 
and  Truth  through  their  own,  but  always  through  others' 
eyes  —  whereby  that  which  was  Truth  to  the  actual  dis- 
cerner  becomes  but  its  faint  and  imperfect  shadow  to  them  — 
will  instinctively  revolt  at  any  view  of  the  moral  universe 
which  professes  to  discover  and  hold  up  to  the  light  that 
w^hich  they  have  never  perceived,  and  thereby  implies  a 
rebuke  to  their  blindness.  I  desire,  therefore,  to  premise 
that,  essentially,  whatever  of  the  philosophy  I  shall  endeavor 
to  set  before  you  this  evening  shall  seem  original  and  pecu 
liar  is  not  mine  by  any  right  of  discovery  or  authorship,  but 


86  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

only  by  that  cordial  acceptance  which  the  inquiring  mind 
gives  to  all  truth.  I  have  shunned  rather  than  sought  novelty, 
so  far  as  is  consistent  with  the  lesson  I  would  inculcate  ;  and 
if  I  shall  be  so  fortunate  as  to  present  to  any  of  you  new  ideas 
or  illustrations  —  above  all,  if  any  of  my  viewTs  shall  appear 
to  any  of  you  forcible  or  striking  —  you  \vill  do  but  justice 
in  giving  credit  for  its  suggestion  to  those  who  have  larger 
opportunities  for  contemplation  and  cultivation  than  I  have  — 
to  the  free-spoken,  profound  thinkers  of  our  age  ;  and  fore 
most  among  them  to  RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON  and  the  little 
band  of  earnest,  clear-sighted  spirits  who  are  more  commonly 
known  by  the  contemptuous  appellation  of  Transcendental- 
ists.  To  these  I  acknowledge  myself  deeply  indebted  both 
for  the  perception  and  expression  of  moral  truth  generally ; 
while  my  own  aim  has  been  to  bring  the  diverging  rays  of 
that  truth  to  bear  focally  on  the  Practical  Education  of  Man. 

I  need  not,  surely,  waste  words  in  demonstrating  to  you 
the  importance  of  a  right  Formation  of  the  Human  Character. 
Everywhere,  in  all  ages,  the  world  assents  in  \vords  to  the 
fact  that  the  True  Man  is  more  than  the  rich  man  —  that  he 
who  enters  upon  the  stage  of  active  life  with  all  his  faculties 
and  capacities  harmoniously  and  maturely  developed,  is 
more  to  be  envied  than  the  perverse  heir  of  a  principality. 
All  men  prize  and  reverence  Knowledge,  Wisdom,  Virtue  ; 
they  would  readily  add  these  to  their  possessions  if  the  price 
were  not  too  high.  Nay,  more  —  if  that  price  could  be  told 
down  on  the  counter  to-day,  and  that  were  the  end  of  it, 
most  men  would  make  the  sacrifice,  and  buy.  It  is  the  end 
less  effort  necessary  to  preserve  and  sustain  the  purchase  that 
discourages  and  disaffects.  Every  man,  until  thoroughly 
perverted,  has  his  ideal  of  Truth  and  Goodness,  on  which 
he  fixes  his  anxious  gaze,  toward  which  he  paddles,  or  be 
lieves  he  is  paddling,  his  frail  bark  over  the  Ocean  of  Life ; 
but  the  soft  breezes  of  Temptation,  the  strong  but  stealthy 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.         67 

tide  of  Circumstance  and  Conformity,  or  the  boisterous  gale 
of  Passion,  is  constantly  bearing;  him  farther  and  farther  from 
his  goal ;  he  will  not  see  that  his  safety  lies  in  opposing  his 
energies  directly  to  the  insidious  foe ;  it  costs  less  effort  to 
yield ;  his  vacant,  wandering  eye  still  discerns  the  beacon  ; 
his  soul  still  feebly  aspires  to  it ;  he  idly  trusts  that  to-morrow 
the  adverse  influence  will  be  withdrawn,  and  he  will  then 
speed  with  case  to  his  haven.  Vain,  short-lived  delusion  ! 
Every  hour  of  non-resistance  relaxes  his  energies  while  it 
increases  the  power  of  the  adversary  ;  at  length  the  beacon, 
grown  distant,  flickers  and  disappears  in  the  deepening  haze, 
and  the  voyage  whose  outset  was  bland  innocence  and  hope 
closes  in  darkness  and  despair. 

Such  is  Life  to  unnumbered  millions  —  such  has  it  been 
through  a  hundred  generations.  And  shall  it  so  continue 
ever?  Shall  the  earth  weep  tears  of  blood  through  centuries 
to  come,  over  the  perverseness,  the  infatuation,  the  wretched 
ness  of  her  children  ?  Let  us  conclude  hopefully  that  such 
is  not  the  order  of  Providence  ;  let  us  search  intently  the 
nature  and  the  history  of  our  Race  for  the  elements  of  a 
higher  life. 

All  evils  are  mainly  overcome  by  the  eradication  of  their 
causes  —  rarely  and  partially  by  the  administration  of  palli 
atives.  The  proneness  to  error,  to  self-abasement,  to  wrong 
doing,  which  stands  so  prominently  out  on  the  page  of  the 
annalist  as  a  characteristic  of  Man,  argues  an  underlying  ne 
cessity,  so  to  speak  —  a  steep  proclivity  in  his  nature  toward 
the  Forbidden.  But  let  us  not  be  deceived  into  confound 
ing  the  superficial,  the  intermediate,  the  factitious,  with  the 
ultimate  and  the  essential.  Let  us  separate  from  this  mass 
of  tendencies  and  instincts  which  we  rashly  call  Human  Na 
ture  the  super-imposed  and  the  remediable,  and  we  can  bet 
ter  judge  of  the  intrinsic  and  the  eternal.  I  propose  first, 


88  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

therefore  —  at  the  risk  of  being  deemed  puerile  by  the 
puerile  —  to  point  out  to  you  some  of  the  errors  of  our  mis 
taken  and  thoughtless  —  nay,  our  vicious  and  destructive  — 
Education,  to  which  Man  is  subjected  from  his  veriest  in 
fancy —  which  are  entwined  with  the  tenderest  threads  of  his 
being,  and  so  grow  into  and  become  a  part  of  his  nature  — 
not  a  second  nature,  but  his  earliest  perception  of  the  relation 
which  he  holds  to  his  fellow-creatures  and  the  universe.  It 
is  by  calling  your  attention,  very  briefly  but  frankly,  to  what 
we  have  all  observed,  with  more  or  less  interest,  of  the  influ 
ences  constantly  at  work  to  corrupt  and  pervert  the  dawning 
intellect,  and  insure  the  Malformation  of  the  Human  Charac 
ter,  that  I  shall  best  impress  you  with  the  nature  and  magni 
tude  of  the  evil  to  be  corrected,  and  determine  the  basis  on 
which  the  Practical  Education  of  the  True  Man,  his  harmo 
nious  development,  and  his  growth  to  perfect  moral  and  in 
tellectual  stature,  must  be  established. 

A  gentle  infant,  fresh  from  the  hand  of  its  Creator,  without 
guile,  or  envy,  or  stormier  passion — without  Fear,  or  Pride, 
or  Discontent  —  exists  in  perfect  harmony  with  Nature  — 
with  the  breeze,  the  blossom,  and  the  verdure  laughing  to 
the  glad  and  glancing  sunbeams.  The  most  worldly  and 
artificial  are  rendered  truer  and  tenderer  by  its  presence,  in 
whose  light  the  wrinkled  brow  of  Age  grows  smoother,  and 
shadows  melt  fleetingly  from  the  marble  face  of  Care.  In 
that  presence,  it  scarcely  needs  a  Divine  Teacher  to  assure 
us  that  '  Of  such  is  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.'  Yet  a  few- 
years  pass,  and  all  how  changed  !  On  the  averted  though 
reckless  countenance  of  Youth  we  too  often  see  stamped  in 
delibly  the  vices  of  mature  depravity  —  of  Covetousness, 
which  needs  but  opportunity  to  become  Robbery ;  of  Sen 
suality,  which  has  already  well  nigh  effaced  the  Divine  im 
press,  and  is  hurrying  its  victim  down  to  an  early  and 
shameful  grave  ;  of  Cruelty,  most  hideous  monster  of  all, 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.  89 

which  may  at  any  moment  be  incited  by  passion  to  imbrue 
its  hands  in  a  brother's  blood.  Whence  has  come  this  rapid, 
this  dreadful  transformation  ?  Alas !  the  germs  of  all  this 
thorny  wilderness  of  Evil  are  too  often  planted  in  tenderest 
Infancy  itself,  whose  fertile  soil  nourishes  into  rapid  luxu 
riance  the  richest  plants  or  foulest  weeds  according  as  the 
seed  is  sown.  Long  before  the  thoughtless  parent  has 
deemed  the  child  susceptible  of  a  moral  impression,  the 
plague-spot  has  fastened  upon  the  tender  heart,  whence 
years  of  patient  culture  and  prayerful  discipline  may  not 
avail  to  remove  it. 

The  first  lesson  of  Evil  usually  imprinted  on  the  infant 
mind,  is  that  of  Sensuality,  or  more  precisely,  Gluttony.  An 
excessive  and  diseased  appetite  is  commonly  created  in  ear 
liest  childhood,  which  is  never  fully  conquered.  Docs  its 
healthy  instincts  revolt  against  bandages  which  are  stifling 
out  its  life,  or  an  atmosphere  which  through  stagnation  and 
exhausting  combustion  or  respiration  has  become  noxious 
and  insupportable,  its  cries  are  hushed  with  needless  food. 
Whatever  its  ailing  or  source  of  disquietude,  even  though  it 
be  repletion  and  oppression,  the  universal  elixir  is  more  food. 
I  need  not  speak  of  nourishment  which  is  in  itself,  regardless 
of  quantity,  unsuitable  and  depraving — of  sweetmeats,  stim 
ulants  and  spices.  Against  these  a  rational  being  needs  no 
other  caution  than  such  as  a  moment's  reflection  must  afford. 
Yet  these  are  soon  lugged  in  to  spur  the  flagging  appetite  — 
to  overcome  the  repulsion  of  Nature  to  a  treatment  which  she 
feels  to  be  fatally  destructive.  The  sad  result  too  commonly 
is  that  the  child  arrives  at  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil  — 
if  it  be  so  fortunate  or  unfortunate  as  to  survive  the  severe 
probation  of  infancy  at  all  —  completely  depraved  in  all  its 
physical  instincts  —  a  ready-made  sensualist  —  a  miniature 
glutton.  To  talk,  after  it  has  passed  this  point,  of  its  consti 
tution  requiring  this  or  that,  or  receivini»;  benefit  from  one 


90  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

thing  or  the  other,  is  to  talk  as  blindly  and  absurdly  as 
though  we  spoke  of  the  constitution  of  an  opium-eater  in  his 
last  stages,  or  that  of  the  victim  of  delirium-tremens.  Would 
I  could  hope  that  the  fearful  infatuation  on  this  subject  in 
which  the  great  majority  are  wilfully  slumbering  is  breaking 
away,  but  facts  will  not  allow  it.  The  records  of  mortality 
in  our  own  time  and  country  undeniably  show  that,  while  the 
average  duration  of  life  is  somewhat  improving,  the  tenure 
of  infant  existence  grows  gradually  frailer ;  and  already  one- 
half  of  the  human  race  are  consigned  to  the  grave  before 
attaining  their  fifth  year — an  increase  of  ten  per  cent,  in 
half  a  century.  I  adduce  this  fact  only  to  avail  myself  of 
its  moral  bearing  ;  yet  it  has  other  relations  which  must  ere 
long  arrest  the  attention  of  the  most  heedless. 

The  second  lesson  of  evil  to  which  the  child  is  subjected 
is  Fraud.  With  all  its  perceptions  fresh  and  wakeful,  it 
early  learns  that  human  speech  and  action  have  two  uses  — 
the  first,  indeed,  to  express  or  convey  ideas  and  emotions ; 
but  the  second,  hardly  less  common,  to  conceal  them.  Of 
what  a  perpetual  comedy  is  not  the  little  denizen  of  the  cra 
dle  too  often  the  quiet,  but  by  no  means  unobservant  spec 
tator  !  The  loud  and  angry  altercation  hushed  into  bland- 
ness  on  the  appearance  of  a  stranger ;  the  vinegar  aspect 
exchanged  for  one  of  '  wreathed  smiles ;'  or  perchance  the 
slander  just  playing  on  the  lip  in  his  absence  now  turned  to 
flattery  and  compliment  in  his  presence  !  But  not  alone  of 
these  grosser  forms  of  Fraud  does  the  young  observer,  puz 
zled  rather  than  amused,  imbibe  the  spirit.  The  yawn  of 
indifference  chased  by  the  smile  of  courtesy ;  the  spruced 
appearance  of  robe  or  room ;  the  hollow  show  of  wealth 
and  luxury  with  which  Pride  and  Poverty,  ill-assorted  yet 
frequently  inseparable  pair,  contrive  to  reconcile  the  sem 
blance  of  their  fortunes  to  the  reality  of  their  desires  — 
these,  and  a  thousand  like  incidents,  are  constantly  teaching 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.  91 

the  infant  mind  that  the  world  on  which  it  is  entering  is  not 
single  but  double  —  a  world  of  things  and  a  world  of  shows  ; 
and  that  the  latter  holds  the  higher  place  in  the  estimation 
and  effort  of  the  multitude. 

The  corrupting,  fatal  effect  of  this  bitter  fruit  of  the  Tree 
of  Knowledge  can  hardly  be  over-estimated.  Half  the  en 
ergies  and  means,  with  far  more  of  the  true  nobility  of  man, 
are  wasted  in  striving  to  appear  what  he  is  not,  but  what  he 
would  wish  to  be  believed.  It  is  this  which  makes  what 
ever  is  painful  of  the  difference  between  the  prince  and  the 
peasant,  the  rich  man  and  his  dependent.  The  latter  sits 
uneasily  in  the  presence  of  the  former,  because  he  is  not 
satisfied  with  what  he  is,  but  would  fain  be  something  else. 
Let  the  frank,  bold  ranger  of  the  forest  come  into  that  same 
presence,  and,  if  at  peace  with  himself,  he  feels  no  inferiority, 
dreads  no  sneer.  Precisely  because  he  does  not  wish  to 
barter  himself  for  something  else,  he  is  not  afraid  of  being 
taken  for  less  than  he  is  worth. 

Vain  will  be  the  effort,  fruitless  the  toil,  of  the  pastor,  the 
pedagogue,  the  philosopher,  to  teach  the  Young  the  value 
and  beauty  of  Truth  so  long  as  the  lessons  of  the  cradle  and 
the  fireside  shall  be  in  practical  contradiction  thereto.  The 
pupil  receives  all  monitions  with  a  sedate  attention,  a  demure 
propriety  of  manner,  most  edifying  to  behold.  But  in  his 
heart  he  is  comparing  and  classing  every  precept  with  those 
pithy  maxims  of  moral  science  wherewith  his  infancy  was 
refreshed,  wherein  he  was  daily  instructed  not  to  lie  by 
those  whose  life  was  a  perpetual  falsehood,  and  to  refrain 
from  stealing  by  those  who  were  constantly  lying  in  wait  to 
entrap  the  good  opinions  of  their  neighbors  without  possess 
ing  the  qualities  on  which  those  good  opinions  should  be 
based.  The  apt  youth  at  once  jumps  to  the  conclusion  that 
all  these  fine  words  are  a  part  of  the  same  system  —  a  corner 
of  the  great  mask  of  decorum  and  propriety  behind  which 
the  world  hides  that  portion  of  its  selfishness  and  sensuality 


92  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

which  could  not  be  openly  displayed  without  creating  uni 
versal  anarchy.  Thus  tutored,  he,  too,  steps  behind  the 
mask,  and  becomes  decorous,  and  has  mouthfulls  of  moral 
saws  at  his  tongue's  end,  and  takes  care  not  to  blazon  his 
vices  uselessly,  and  not  to  expend  any  portion  of  his  char 
acter  when  the  gratification  he  seeks  can  be  secured  with 
out,  or  at  any  rate  without  securing  the  full  value  of  it. 
And  thus  he  walks  daintily  through  life,  a  fair-seeming,  soft- 
spoken,  reputable  man,  and  in  the  world's  facetious  diction 
ary  is  classed  '  respectable  ;'  and  if  at  last  some  great  temp 
tation  impels  him  to  some  great  villainy,  the  town  rolls  up 
its  eyes  in  pretended  astonishment  that  so  respectable  a  man 
has  turned  out  a  forger,  a  libertine,  a  defaulter,  though  it 
has  seen  him  educated  for  a  knave,  and  at  heart  known  him 
for  one  all  along ! 

The  third  fatal  vice  of  our  system  of  Practical  Education 
is  the  low  estimate  which  we  palpably  put  upon  Labor.  On 
this  subject  the  world  is  not  so  specious  and  hypocritical  as 
upon  others,  but  wears  its  fault  jauntily  and  with  an  air.  In 
the  Divine  order,  Labor  is  not  merely  a  universal  duty,  but. 
a  universal  necessity.  '  Whoso  will  not  work  shall  not  eat' 
is  the  immutable  law,  and  he  who  strives  to  evade  it  but 
vainly  lacerates  himself  on  the  sharp  thorns  wrhich  every 
where  hedge  in  the  narrow  path  of  Right.  Take  what  you 
need  at  the  bounteous  table  of  Nature,  says  the  decree, 
but  pay  its  price.  Fruitless  the  effort,  preposterous  the 
desire,  to  obtain  by  trick  what  can  only  come  by  equiva 
lent.  The  fisherman  is  caught  in  his  net — 'the  engineer 
hoist  by  his  own  petard.'  The  schemer  reaches  forth  his 
eager  hand  to  the  fruit  that  looked  so  tempting  on  the 
bough,  and  grasps,  not  that  which  he  coveted,  but  apples 
of  Sodom  —  fair  without,  but  within  bitterness  and  ashes. 
What  was  coveted  as  luxury,  unduly  acquired,  has  become 
disease,  satiety  and  death.  All  History,  all  Tragedy,  all 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.          93 

Romance,  is  full  of  this  ;  yet  the  blind  world  goes  on  sche 
ming  to  circumvent  God,  and  enjoy  the  pleasure  without 
fulfilling  the  condition,  as  though  all  that  the  wise  have  ob 
served  and  the  good  have  written  for  its  admonition  were 
but  a  shallow  fable,  invented  by  the  cunning  of  those  who 
have,  to  secure  themselves  against  the  covetous  assaults  of 
those  who  have  not.  In  fact,  all  vice,  all  transgression, 
roots  itself  in  this  fundamental  error,  that  the  laws  of  the 
Universe,  which  have  vindicated  themselves  from  eternity, 
may  in  this  particular  instance  be  evaded  —  that  the  good 
which  is  coveted  may  be  separated  from  the  condition  which 
underlies  it  —  that  the  magnet  will  for  once  have  a  positive 
pole  and  no  negative  —  that  there  shall  be  summer  without 
winter  —  day  without  night  —  sun  without  shade.  To  de 
tach  the  sensual  good  from  the  moral  good  —  the  enjoyment 
from  the  use  —  the  transient  from  the  everlasting  —  has  been 
the  struggle  of  perverted  Humanity  through  sixty  centuries 
of  wretchedness.  Monstrous  delusion  !  idle  dreamings  of 
a  disordered  intellect.  The  stone  rolled  with  subtlest  intent 
to  the  summit  of  the  precipice  rebounds  instantly  and 
vehemently  to  the  bottom,  overthrowing  the  contriver  in 
its  headlong  career.  If  the  primary  requirement  may  be 
evaded,  the  penalty  is  swift,  unrelenting,  inevitable. 

Now  this  first  great  lesson  of  Moral  Truth,  which  all 
clear-sighted  experience  must  teach,  is  one  which  is  but 
blindly,  imperfectly  taught  at  all,  but  which  is  utterly  set  at 
naught  in  our  popular  inculcations  with  regard  to  Labor. 
What  child  of  affluence  or  even  of  want  is  duly  taught  that 
if  he  would  truly  enjoy  he  must  so  live  as  to  increase  the 
means  of  enjoyment  —  if  he  would  eat  he  must  work  ?  Love 
for  love  ;  truth  for  truth  ;  service  for  service  ;  this  is  the 
coin  he  must  pay ;  for  none  other  will  be  accepted.  If  he 
seek  to  procure  these  by  force  or  subtlety,  he  obtains  not 
what  he  desires,  but  only  the  counterfeit,  which  only  his 


94  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

own  correspondent  corruption  blinds  him  from  perceiving 
to  be  as  different  from  the  thing  sought  as  light  from  dark 
ness.  Let  us  not  wait,  then,  for  the  world  to  teach  this 
great  truth  through  that  rugged  experience  which  is  but 
another  term  for  suffering.  The  child  which  is  practically 
taught  in  the  little  world  of  Home  that  Labor  is  a  burden 
and  well  nigh  a  disgrace  —  that  Service  is  rightfully  of  con 
straint  and  not  of  affection  —  that  the  great  end  of  Life  is 
not  nobly  to  Do,  but  skilfully  to  avoid  Doing — that  the 
service  which  requires  humbler  faculties  and  a  ruder  culture 
than  some  daintier  avocation  is  therefore  less  honorable 
and  meritorious  —  that  the  duties  and  obligations  of  the  ser 
vant  and  the  served  are  not  throroughly  mutual  —  that  child 
has  received  already  a  moral  perversity  which  not  thousands 
of  sonorous  homilies  —  not  years  of  scowling  Pride,  and 
gnawing  Disappointment,  and  the  drear  vacuity  of  unloved 
existence,  shall  thoroughly  efface  from  his  being. 

There  remains  one  other  monstrous  error  of  our  fireside 
Education  which  I  can  not  refrain  from  exposing,  though 
I  am  aware  it  is  less  common  than  those  I  have  already  rep 
rehended,  and  in  fact  is  but  an  off-shoot  from  them  —  a 
branch  of  that  great  Upas  of  false  Formation  of  Character 
whereof  I  have  endeavored  to  expose  the  gnarled  and 
writhing  roots  to  general  scrutiny  and  abhorrence.  I  allude 
to  the  fatal  practice  of  paying  for  virtue,  or  rewarding  with 
adventitious  indulgence  acts  of  integrity  and  of  duty.  As  in 
its  nature  and  origin  this  is  a  compound  of  most  of  the  errors  I 
have  enumerated,  so  it  is  in  its  consequences  more  pernicious 
than  any  of  them.  The  child  which,  for  performing  a  task 
nimbly  and  faithfully,  or  acquiring  a  lesson  rapidly  and 
thoroughly,  is  rewarded  with  some  dainty  confection  or 
glittering  toy,  you  have  doubly  corrupted  ;  first,  in  making 
that  a  task  which,  being  a  duty,  should  also  be  a  pleasure  in 
itself ;  secondly,  in  pampering  an  appetite  or  a  craving  which, 
being  factitious,  can  not  fail  to  be  evil.  If  that  task  were  not 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.  95 

properly  his  — if  that  lesson  were  not  of  itself  worth  acquiring 
— you  should  not  have  imposed  it.  If  it  were,  you  have 
blinded  him  to  its  true  worth  and  meaning ;  you  have  taught 
him  to  look  astray  for  the  reward  of  well-doing  ;  you  have 
made  that  which  was  a  simple  and  true  action  no  longer 
such  but  a  finesse  —  a  dexterous  feat  —  a  sinister  calculation. 
The  child  thus  paid  to  do  right  will  soon  have  learned 
not  to  do  right  without  payment.  It  will  not  accept  the 
harvest  as  the  proper  recompense  of  its  toil  and  culture,  but 
will  clamor  to  be  paid  beside  for  sowing  and  nurturing  it. 
Worse  even  than  this  is  the  delusion  implanted  that  daintier 
food  and  gaudier  toys  are  of  more  value  than  elevating  know- 
ledge  and  habits  of  healthful  Industry  —  in  fact,  that  they  are 
of  any  value  at  all.  But  time  would  fail  me  to  trace  out  all 
the  evil  consequences  of  that  one  woful  folly  by  which  you 
have  polluted  all  the  springs  of  action,  clouded  the  moral 
vision,  and  corrupted  the  very  soul  of  the  victim  of  your 
fatally  mistaken  policy.  Let  us  banish  for  ever  the  idea  of 
a  reward  for  well-doing  extraneous  from  and  unrelated  to 
itself.  There  is  nothing  like  it  in  Nature  —  in  the  vast  uni 
verse.  God  never  promised  a  reward  thus  detached  from 
and  alien  to  the  obedience  it  would  recompense  ;  the  Devil 
promises,  but  never  pays.  It  is  absurdity  to  desire,  madness 
to  expect  anything  like  it. 

I  have  thus  glanced  at  some  of  the  more  prominent  errors 
of  Education  and  defects  of  Principle  which  enter  into  and 
determine  the  Malformation  of  the  Human  Character.  Keep 
ing  steadily  in  view  not  merely  the  errors  thus  exposed,  but 
the  facts  which  their  correction  necessarily  implies,  so  as  to 
avoid  useless  repetitions,  we  approach  the  consideration  of 
those  principles  and  qualities  which  should  enter  into  and 
govern  the  formation  of  a  true  character. 

You  have  already  anticipated  the  statement  that  first  among 
these  is  Truth  itself,  or,  more  precisely,  an  entire  Truth- 


96  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

fulness,  extending  beyond  the  mere  avoidance  of  verbal  false 
hood  to  the  instinctive  and  rigid  preservation  of  perfect  in 
tegrity  of  being.  It  is  not  enough  that  the  blush  mantles  the 
cheek  at  the  thought  of  uttering  a  falsehood  —  the  true  man 
revolts  equally  at  the  idea  of  acting,  dressing,  appearing  one. 
We  must  extirpate  these  nice,  unmeaning  distinctions  of  a 
heartless  and  unprincipled  Opinion,  the  offspring  of  a  lax 
Morality  and  a  short-sighted  Convenience,  which  teach  us 
that  we  may  swear  by  the  gold  upon  the  altar  though  not  by 
the  altar  itself.  The  man  who  dresses,  lives,  entertains,  in  a 
style  to  which  his  means  are  properly  inadequate,  hoping 
thereby  to  be  esteemed  more  affluent  and  thrifty  than  he  is, 
is  not  merely  enacting  a  daily  lie,  but  one  which  comes  home 
to  his  own  door  even  sooner  than  the  misdeeds  of  the  hardier 
transgressor.  Eternal  justice  for  ever  holds  its  balance  true, 
and  laughs  at  all  puny  attempts  to  evade  its  unerring  de 
cisions.  Still  the  thief  robs  himself,  the  swindler  defrauds 
himself,  exactly  as  did  his  prototype  four  thousand  years  ago. 
The  story  of  Haman  and  Mordecai  is  the  epitome  of  uni 
versal  History,  could  we  read  its  page  with  the  eye  of 
spiritual  discernment  and  with  senses  unclogged  by  the 
grossness  of  our  groveling  life.  Yet  the  thief,  the  burglar 
has  the  wretched,  demoniac  satisfaction  of  imagining  that  he 
has  not  been  the  only  victim  of  his  own  depravity  —  that  if 
he  has  doomed  himself  to  lasting  misery  he  has  at  least  in 
flicted  some  injury  on  another.  But  the  hypocrite  wears  out 
his  life  in  a  constant  effort  to  exchange  his  substance  for 
shadows — to  barter  the  stubborn  wealth  of  his  granary,  his 
house,  his  heart,  for  its  evanescent  semblance  in  other 
men's  eyeballs.  Thus  living  in  a  world  of  shows  and 
mockeries,  he  becomes  a  mockery  to  himself ;  to  him  there 
i.«  no  reality,  no  good,  no  knowledge ;  and  God,  Virtue,  Con 
fidence,  Love,  are  but  the  bubbles  with  which  men,  them 
selves  hardly  more  real,  strive  ever  to  delude  and  overreach 
each  other.  Thus  deceived  and  mocked  when  he  fancies 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.  97 

himself  deceiving,  the  hypocrite  stands  forth  a  perpetual 
alien  in  the  earnest  and  kindly  domain  of  Nature  —  the 
sorriest,  saddest  jest  on  the  broad  face  of  Creation. 

I  plead  not  for  eccentricity,  for  roughness  of  manner — I 
am  no  stranger  to  the  bland  amenities  and  suavities  of  life. 
I  acknowledge  a  fitness  to  time,  and  duty,  and  circumstance, 
in  dress  and  in  incidents  of  even  lighter  moment.  I  accept 
the  common  sense  of  mankind  as  the  arbiter  between  what  is 
real  and  natural  and  what  is  assumed  and  fantastic.  The 
banker,  the  capitalist,  the  merchant,  who  should  ape  the 
dress  of  the  carman,  the  hod-carrier,  would  be  justly  the 
ridicule  of  every  healthy  mind,  and  of  none  more  than  the 
carman  himself.  No  man  enjoys  more  keenly  the  stage- 
shown  absurdities  of  the  footman  bedecked  with  his  master's 
delegated  authority,  the  valet  personating  the  prince,  than  do 
footmen  and  valets.  This  is  but  the  error  condemned  in 
another  shape  —  the  pendulum  at  the  other  extremity  of  its 
range.  I  would  have  no  man  do  this  or  refrain  from  that  in 
contradiction  from  the  world,  any  more  than  in  consistency 
with  it.  Nay,  more :  I  admit  and  counsel  acquiescence  with 
the  ordinary,  the  prescribed,  the  established,  in  all  matters 
essentially  indifferent  or  trifling.  I  loathe  perverseness  —  it 
is  at  war  with  harmony  and  the  supreme  good.  Convince  me 
that  the  Quaker  remains  stubbornly  covered  in  the  presence 
of  his  equals,  his  seniors,  from  mere  mulishness  or  whim, 
and  I  abandon  him  to  your  rebukes  ;  I  will  second  them 
with  my  own.  But  let  me  realize  that  that  rude  non-coin- 
pliance  stands  to  him  for  a  vital  fact — that  it  symbolizes  to 
him  a  great  principle,  to  wit,  the  stern  uprising  of  a  true 
manhood  against  servility  and  fawning  adulation,  and  I  will 
defend  him  to  the  last  gasp  —  I  will  do  him  such  reverence 
as  befits  a  manly  self-respect,  for  his  stout  fidelity  to  a  con 
viction. 

9 


98  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

But  in  truth  the  vice  of  our  time,  and  I  apprehend  of  all 
times,  with  rare  exceptions,  is  of  opposite  tendency,  and  it  is 
to  oppose  this  that  our  shields  should  be  locked  and  our 
spears  pointed.  There  is  a  simpering  and  dapper  conformity, 
a  blind  deferring  to  other  men's  estimates,  habits,  tastes, 
which  robs  life  of  its  freshness,  its  originality,  its  masculine 
strength.  Where  all  are  content  to  dress,  to  dine,  to  walk, 
and  most  to  think,  to  feel,  to  act,  as  some  dozen  or  score 
shall  see  fit  to  dictate,  what  wonder  that  invention  is  checked, 
that  genius  is  caged,  that  existence  becomes  tame  and  vacant, 
or,  if  not  torpid,  still  unmeaning  as  an  idiot's  tale  ?  The 
waters  of  this  dead  sea  of  complaisance  and  barren  formality 
need  to  be  visited  now  and  then  by  the  rough  gales  of 
Heaven,  even  though  they  be  shocked,  and  agitated,  and 
driven  helter-skelter  thereby ;  better  this  than  that  they  should 
become  stagnant  and  putrid.  Do  not  mistakenly  imagine 
that  you  must  go  out  of  yourself — that  you  must  become 
eccentric  and  extravagant  to  produce  this  effect.  In  the 
midst  of  universal  ducking,  and  sidling,  and  compromise, 
you  will  seem  sufficiently  rigid  and  angular  if  you  walk 
simply  and  naturally  on. 

The  danger  of  this  dead  compliance  —  of  living  not  your 
own  genuine  thought  but  other  men's  opinions,  which  even 
if  true  for  them  are  not  wholly  so  for  you  —  is  one  of  the 
most  subtle  and  pervading  of  the  many  which  track  the  in 
genuous  and  timid  through  life.  It  is  an  evil  which  magni 
fies  as  our  social  relations  become  more  artificial,  and  com 
plex,  and  penetrating.  It  assails  us  even  on  the  side  of  our 
virtues.  Each  of  us  is  attached  to  some  party  in  politics, 
some  sect  in  religion,  some  coterie  in  morals,  philanthropy 
or  culture ;  and  this  is  well,  so  long  as  that  party,  that  cote 
rie,  shall  represent  to  us  the  highest  attainable  good  in  that 
particular  province  which  it  contemplates.  But  the  impulse 
which  says,  '  Do  not  proclaim  that  certain  truth  which  you 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.         99 

have  discovered  because  other  men  have  not  discovered  it, 
and  your  bold  advocacy  will  be  wielded  to  the  prejudice  of 
your  sect  or  party,  deserves  only  to  be  scouted  and  trampled 
under  foot.  What  right  has  sect  or  party  to  intermeddle 
with  your  free  thought,  save  to  accept  or  reject  it  ?  What 
right  to  subject  the  line  of  your  truth  to  the  orbit  of  its  pol 
icy —  perchance  its  narrow  policy  and  low  though  correct 
aims  ?  O  fear  not  to  be  wholly  true  and  manful,  and  the 
devotees  of  policy  and  craft  shall  be  driven  into  conformity 
with  your  lofty  and  earnest  endeavor ! 

I  have  hesitated  to  place  Temperance  next  to  Truth  as  a 
primary  element  of  a  just  character,  in  view  of  the  low  idea, 
the  negative  insignificance,  to  which  the  term  has  been  de 
graded.  Well  may  that  Temperance  which  is  satisfied  with 
restricting  its  disciples  and  votaries  to  such  quantities  of  an 
infatuating  poison  as  shall  not  quite  suffice  to  drown  the 
reason  and  paralyze  the  frame  —  or  even  that  better  modifi 
cation  which  counsels  the  entire  abandonment  of  that  one 
especial  bane  of  life,  leaving  all  others  to  work  destruction 
at  will,  become  the  scoff  of  drunkards,  the  by-word  of 
debauchees.  But  in  that  comprehensive  and  consistent  sig 
nification,  which  implies  the  absolute  subjection  of  the  appe 
tites  to  the  government  of  the  reason  in  all  things  —  the 
satisfaction  of  each  healthful  and  true  desire  with  reference 
to  the  end  of  its  creation  and  in  obedience  to  the  moral  law 
of  its  existence  —  and,  by  consequence,  the  stern  rejection 
of  every  proffered  gratification,  the  repression  of  every  ap 
petite,  which  finds  its  consummation  in  itself,  and  shrinks 
from  the  thought  of  to-morrow  —  none  can  fail  to  recognize 
in  Temperance  a  necessary  moral  as  well  as  physical  basis 
of  the  full  and  proper  development  of  our  being.  I  have 
already  treated  somewhat  of  this  subject,  though  inversely; 
and  I  will  not  dwell  on  it  here.  That  Man  should  be  tem 
perate,  the  vilest  drunkard  will  agree  ;  the  great  difficulty 


100  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

which  meets  us  is  that  of  awaking  in  him  a  whole  and  con 
sistent  idea  of  what  Temperance  is.  When  he  shall  no 
longer  be  schooled  from  the  rostrum  by  lecturers  themselves 
the  slaves  of  tobacco-chewing  and  the  like  filthy  vices,  but 
in  the  language  of  consistency  and  love,  I  will  hope  that  his 
restoration  to  manhood,  its  dignity,  its  healthfulness  and  true 
enjoyments,  can  not  long  be  deferred. 

Having  established  the  basis  of  a  true  character  in  the 
elements  of  perfect  Truth  and  Temperance  in  all  things, 
we  are  ready  to  advance  boldly  toward  the  great  central 
idea  of  Virtue.  And  here,  as  I  deem  the  definitions  of 
the  Schools,  and  to  some  extent  of  the  Pulpit  also,  imper 
fect  and  unsatisfactory,  I  shall  not  hesitate  to  expatiate  fear 
lessly,  and,  accepting  the  best  lights  that  are  afforded,  search 
vigorously  for  a  true  and  solid  foundation.  You  tell  me 
Man  should  be  virtuous,  reverend  Divine,  and  I  ask  you 
why  he  should  be,  not  to  dispute  your  self-evident  propo 
sition,  but  to  aid  me  in  determining  what  Virtue  is.  If  you 
stop  my  inquiry  with  the  crusty  answer  that  he  must  be  so 
because  God  commands  it,  you  have  neither  satisfied  nor 
profited  me  at  all.  I  still  need  to  know  why  He  has  com 
manded  it — to  know  it  not  from  arbitrary  dogma  but  serene 
perception  —  or  I  shall  be  lost  in  a  whirlpool  of  babbling 
sects,  of  unedifying  jargon.  I  bow  reverently  to  the  axiom 
that  God  is  to  be  obeyed,  but  I  am  still  driven  to  inquire 
which  God,  or  rather  which  of  the  thousand  warring  expo 
sitions  of  His  will.  Tell  me,  most  self-sufficient  Philoso 
pher,  tell  me,  pale  Anchorite,  absorbed  in  penitence  and 
holy  meditation,  why  am  I  to  walk  sternly  in  the  jagged 
and  dusty  highway  of  Honor  and  Good,  while  a  thousand 
flowery  by-paths,  more  inviting  to  my  wandering  gaze,  are 
opening  on  every  side,  and  proffering  ease  and  dalliance  ? 
Do  not  attempt  to  frighten  me  with  the  danger  that  if  I  di 
verge  I  shall  not  be  able  to  return ;  for  do  I  not  see  thou- 


THE   FORMATION  OF   CHARACTER.  101 

sands  in  the  path  before  me  who  have  so  diverged,  and  yet 
have  made  good  their  return?  Do  n<H  attempt  to-  frighten 
me  with  the  chances  of  perdition ;  ihe  gambler  often  knows 
that  the  chances  are  against  him;  yety, leave  hrm  tajt  a'hojpfe 
of  gain,  and  he  plays  eagerly,  recklessly  on.  Once  grant 
that  there  is  a  chance,  though  it  be  one  in  a  thousand,  to  profit 
by  wrong-doing,  and  you  have  confirmed  millions  in  the 
way  of  error  and  ruin. 

The  true  deduction  of  far-seeing  wisdom  imports  that 
Virtue,  in  itself  and  for  itself,  is  the  most  desirable  thing, 
above  all  consequences,  aside  from  all  results,  spurning  all 
mercenary  calculations  of  profit  and  loss.  Whoso  has  per 
formed  an  act  of  genuine  love  and  service  has  no  thought 
to  look  anxiously  around  and  above  him  to  discern  if  God 
and  Man  are  taking  heed  of  his  sacrifice  ;  for  he  already 
feels  himself  exalted  and  blessed  by  His  deed.  He  has  not 
climbed  toilsomely  a  day's  journey  nearer  to  Heaven,  but 
its  radiance  and  bliss  have  come  down  to  him  ;  they  have 
already  shed  a  halo  around  his  brow,  a  rapture  in  his  breast. 
Well  knows  he  from  the  depths  of  his  own  being  that  in  the 
way  of  Truth  and  of  Life  there  is  no  self-denial  nor  suffer 
ing  ;  that  Virtue  is  the  one  only  thing  too  precious  to  be 
bought  and  sold.  What  is  it  to  him  that  houses,  lands, 
honors,  power,  are  offered  him  in  exchange  for  it?  all  this 
is  not  temptation,  but  absurdity.  It  is  enough  that  he  has 
already  solved  for  himself  that  Divine  problem,  of  univer 
sal  and  not  particular  application  —  'What  shall  it  profit  a 
man  to  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul  ?' 

I  must  be  permitted  to  linger  upon  the  homely  enforce 
ment  of  this  Truth  —  to  multiply  and  vary  its  illustrations  — 
Ritice  its  practical  denial  through  grossness  of  perception  is 
the  one  great  error  of  perverse  Humanity.  Come  not  to  me 
with  your  absurd  repinings  that  you  have  lost  by  integrity 
some  temporal  advantage  which  your  rival  through  greater 
9* 


102  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

suppleness  has  secured ;  if  you  had  had  any  integrity  worth 
preserving,  yon  would  -rather  thank  God  that  you  were  not 
abandoned  to  temptation.  Nay,  more :  were  your  eye 
sittgle'a'ftd'yoTkr  spirittuH.)  vision  unobscured,  you  would  have 
seen  that  a  base  success  is  the  worst  of  discomfitures, 
dragging  after  it  an  interminable  chain  of  miseries  and  mor 
tifications.  Swift  and  terrible  is  the  retribution  which  follows 
him  who  has  by  violence  or  indirection  succeeded  to  station, 
honors,  affluence,  which  he  has  not  deserved.  The  rustle 
of  every  leaf  is  to  his  ear  the  trump  of  the  Archangel. 

History  has  borne  down  to  us  the  relation  that  the  last  and 
noblest  Brutus,  commending  himself  to  death  after  the 
crowning  disaster  of  Philippi,  quoted  this  line  from  Euripides, 
4  O  Virtue !  I  have  followed  thee  through  life,  and  I  find 
thee  at  last  but  a  shadow  !'  "  I  doubt  not  (says  Emerson,) 
that  the  hero  is  slandered  by  this  report.  The  great  soul 
does  not  sell  its  nobleness.  It  does  not  ask  to  dine  nicely, 
nor  sleep  warm.  The  essence  of  greatness  is  the  perception 
that  Virtue  is  enough.  Poverty  is  its  ornament.  Plenty  it 
does  not  need,  and  can  very  well  abide  its  loss."  I  heartily 
accept  this  judgment,  and  would  push  it  to  its  natural  con 
clusions.  I  will  not  doubt  that  the  last  of  the  free  Romans 
rendered  up  his  spirit  with  a  prayer  for  the  country  he  had  so 
truly  served  to  the  utmost,  and  a  disdain  akin  to  pity  for  her 
marble-hearted  enslavers — that  he  scorned,  even  more  than 
their  parricidal  ambition,  that  obtuseness  which  blinded  them 
to  the  perception  that  in  the  fall  of  the  Commonwealth  they 
too  fell  irretrievably  —  that  the  enthroned,  empurpled  despot 
is  but  the  first  slave  in  his  dominions,  and  that  Fear  and 
conscious  Guilt  are  the  most  exacting  and  cruel  of  masters. 

But  this  tradition  would  never  have  floated  thus  far  adown 
the  tide  of  time  if  it  had  not  been  founded  in  fact.  False 
hood  has  never  this  vitality.  Foul  slander  as  it  is  to  the 
spent  and  dying  patriot,  it  is  a  pregnant  truth  as  regarding 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.  103 

the  age  which  invented  and  perpetuated  it.  I  read  in  that  one 
line  of  practical  Atheism  the  prophecy  of  a  thousand  years 
of  dwarfing,  darkening  Humanity — of  receding  Civilization 
and  deepening  Night.  By  its  lurid  light,  I  see  the  haughty 
Mistress  of  the  World  sunken  and  still  sinking  in  sloth,  sen 
suality,  corruption,  and  slavery  ;  a  military  banditti  selling 
her  publicly  in  the  market ;  the  slaves  of  fools  her  capricious, 
exacting  masters  ;  a  horse  her  Consul.  I  see  the  hordes  of 
barbarians,  so  lately  routed  and  panic-stricken,  gathering 
again  at  the  scent  of  her  stiffening  corpse  ;  I  see  them 
pouring  across  the  Rhine,  the  Alps,  the  Danube,  which  they 
so  lately  invoked  to  shield  them  from  the  terrible  onslaught 
of  her  invincible  legions.  Barrier  after  barrier  gives  way 
before  them ;  army  after  army  melts  like  snow  upon  the 
sunny  slopes  of  April  ;  panic  and  despair  precede  them  ; 
desolation,  blood,  and  ashes  are  behind ;  the  steed  in  whose 
track  grass  springs  never  again  drinks  the  water  of  the 
Rhone,  the  Po,  the  Tiber  ;  and  Rome,  long  tottering  to  her 
foundations,  falls  at  length  a  gory  wreck,  an  everlasting  ruin. 
Her  sons  become  the  slaves  of  strangers,  the  scoff  and  foot 
ball  of  barbarians.  So  perish  they  who  in  the  fullness  of 
lust,  and  pride,  and  sensuality,  have  vainly  imagined  Prov 
idence  a  delusion  and  Virtue  an  empty  name  ! 

I  shall  not  err  in  commending  a  generous  Self-Trust  as  an 
essential  element  of  a  manly  and  earnest  Character ;  though 
chattering  Conceit  stand  ready  at  the  door,  and  strive  to  pass 
itself  for  that  thing  it  would  be  but  is  not.  They  two  are 
wide  asunder  as  the  poles.  Conceit  is  founded  in  a  low 
idea  of  the  capacities  of  Human  Nature — of  brother,  neigh 
bor,  countrymen.  The  coxcomb  does  not  so  much  magnify 
his  own  abilities  —  for  he  has  sounded  their  shallow  depths 
and  traced  their  narrow  boundaries  —  as  he  depresses  and 
distrusts  those  of  others.  Living  ever  in  a  home  atmosphere 
of  pretenre  and  falsehood — of  tinsel  drapery,  covering 


104  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

shabby  raiment  and  ragged  walls — he  cheats  himself  into 
the  belief  that  the  possessions  of  others  are  alike  hollow  and 
meretricious  —  and  that  his  assurance  passes  for  knowledge, 
his  insolence  for  authority:,  his  impertinence  for  wit,  so  long 
as  the  world  through  complaisance  or  decorum  refrains  from 
laughing  in  his  face  !  Miserable  deception  !  that  ostler  who 
bowed  to  him  in  feigned  deference  has  accurately  weighed 
and  measured  him  at  a  single  glance ;  that  chimney-s\veep 
on  whom  he  fancies  he  has  made  so  profound  an  impression 
is  already  laughing  at  his  folly.  Let  him  betake  himself  to 
what  market  he  will,  he  can  not  sell  himself  for  one  penny 
more  than  he  is  worth.  But  a  genuine  Self-Trust  entrenches 
itself  in  the  largest  possibilities  of  Humanity.  How  shall  it 
discourage  you,  faint  heart  and  faithless,  that  Alexander 
conquered,  that  Columbus  discovered,  that  Washington  nobly 
withstood?  That  these  have  well  done  but  proves  that  you 
too  may  do  if  you  will,  and  to  that  end  only  do  they  exist 
for  you.  Excuse  not  your  inglorious  sloth  by  the  assertion 
that  the  precise  act  of  daring  or  endurance  which  was  theirs 
can  not  be  yours  —  that  you  have  not  the  qualities,  or  it  may 
be  the  opportunities,  which  have  made  their  names  immortal. 
You  were  not  created  to  perform  their  acts  but  your  own. 
If  the  deeds  which  they  made  theirs  had  remained  unacted 
till  now,  they  might  have  devolved  on  you  ;  but  the  universe 
can  not  halt  in  its  eternal  career  for  needless  iterations  that 
you  may  gratify  your  petty  and  senseless  ambition.  But 
whatsoever  act  is  truly  yours,  lies  broad  and  palpable  before 
you,  if  you  will  but  turn  from  your  mousing  and  heed  it. 
For  that  act  all  the  Ages  have  been  silently,  unerringly  pre 
paring  ;  the  wisdom  of  Omniscience,  the  power  of  Omnip 
otence,  are  pledged  that  your  strength  shall  be  equal  to  your 
day.  Accept,  then,  with  alacrity  your  position  in  the 
Eternal  Order  of  things  ;  and  seek  not  to  hide  your  sloth  and 
sensuality  beneath  vain  regrets  that  you  are  yourself  and  not 
another,  and  thus  bury  your  talent  in  a  napkin. 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.  105 

In  truth,  they  who  have  put  their  heart  into  their  work  at 
the  outset  are  rarely  troubled  with  these  qualms  of  incapacity. 
The  traveler  oftenest  finds  his  road  impassable  as  he  sits  by 
the  tempting  fireside,  and  listens  shuddering  to  the  howling 
of  the  storm.  Let  him  but  breast  it  with  a  smile  of  gay 
indifference,  of  conscious  power,  and  the  gale  sweeps  less 
fiercely,  the  darkness  is  no  longer  Egyptian.  And  thus,  too, 
of  our  timid  sensitiveness  to  Opinion.  Ridicule,  that  weapon 
of  fools,  is  harmless,  save  against  themselves;  it  never  yet 
pierced  the  solid  armor  of  an  upright  and  manly  purpose. 
When  Chivalry  became  a  dead  form,  a  cloak  for  rapacity  and 
license,  a  senseless  cumberer  of  the  ground,  Cervantes  ex 
tinguished  it  by  a  romance  ;  yet  all  the  wits  of  Christendom 
could  not  have  shaken  it  one  iota  so  long  as  it  remained  a 
reality  —  a  vital  existence.  Are  you  tempted  to  abandon 
your  idea  because  a  gaping  multitude  who  can  not  realize, 
condemn,  and  make  mouths  at  it  ?  then  it  was  never  truly 
yours.  You  but  borrowed  it,  in  the  silly  hope  that  as  it  wns 
novel  and  startling  it  might  become  popular.  Vain  imagin 
ing  !  if  it  had  been  worth  anything  to  you,  you  would  not 
have  come  by  it  so  easily.  Were  it  now  truly  your  own, 
you  would  be  ready  to  follow  it  over  burning  plowshares. 

And  yet  we  are  deceived  by  our  superficial  philosophy  in 
the  presumption  that  Truth  is  rejected  by  the  world.  That 
it  is  not  readily  embraced  and  assimilated  —  that  the  good 
seed  falls  oftenest  on  rugged  and  thorny  ground,  or  at  least 
on  that  where  the  harvest  is  tardy,  it  needs  no  argument  to 
show.  Still  is  its  utterance  never  without  witness  or  efficacy; 
and  the  reverberation  of  its  forgotten  tones  comes  back  to  us 
from  the  opposite  horizon  to  rebuke  our  hot  impatience,  our 
fragile  faith.  In  our  short-sighted  leaping  to  conclusions,  we 
misjudge  and  misinterpret.  A  wild,  uncouth  person  sud 
denly  appears  among  us,  and  begins  haranguing  in  advocacy 
of  Repentance,  or  Temperance,  or  Abolition,  or  some  other 
revolt  against  established  abuses.  Forthwith  there  are  com- 


106  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

motion,  and  indignation,  and  violence  ;  every  voice  and 
hand  are  raised  against  him  ;  and  we  rashly  decide  that 
Public  Opinion  has  condemned  him.  Not  so  :  he  has  sum 
moned  Public  Opinion  to  the  judgment-seat,  and  condemned 
it.  Incoherent  and  irrational  his  speech  may  mainly  be, 
three  parts  error  to  one  of  truth ;  unsound  and  preposterous 
his  theory ;  but  not  for  this  is  the  multitude  incited  to  hiss 
or  stone  him.  He  might  have  babbled  nonsense  or  raved  in 
delirium  till  doomsday,  and  hardly  have  provoked  a  smile. 
But  through  all  his  folly  there  have  gleamed  rays  of  pier 
cing  truth ;  and  this  it  is  which  has  excited  the  uproar  ;  not 
what  the  mob  rejected,  but  what  they  unwillingly  believed 
and  dreaded.  I  would  counsel  you,  then,  give  fearless  utter 
ance  to  your  whole  convictions ;  give  free  scope  to  your 
strongest  energies,  in  the  faith  that  whatever  you  shall  do 
truly,  simply,  and  uprightly,  could  be  no  better  done  by  men 
nor  angels,  and  will  surely  commend  itself  to  the  understand 
ings  of  the  highest,  the  consciences  of  the  most  perverted. 

I  approach  with  diffidence  the  consideration  of  Heroism, 
not  as  an  element  but  as  the  complement  and  capital  grace 
of  the  Human  Character,  in  view  of  what  has  been  so  well 
said  of  it,  as  it  were  but  yesterday,  by  Carry le  in  a  glorious 
volume  ;  by  Emerson  in  a  transcendent  essay.  In  the  light 
of  these,  all  truth  that  may  be  offered  on  the  subject  must 
seem  but  imitative,  or  at  best  the  tame  and  needless  elucida 
tion  of  a  transparent  and  living  text.  Of  such  as  are  familiar 
with  these  I  can  only  expect  pardon  for  my  temerity  in  the 
event  that  it  shall  prove  not  wholly  unsuccessful  and  use 
less. 

By  Heroism,  then,  I  understand  the  overflowing  of  a  gen 
erous  and  exalted  nature  into  all  acts  of  lofty  daring  and 
endeavor.  In  its  purest  condition  it  is  Virtue  militant ;  in 
any,  it  is  Human  Energy  rising  superior  to  inconvenience, 
obstacle,  and  the  petty  limitations  which  seem  to  hedge  in 
our  mortal  condition ;  against  the  cobwebs  by  which  Timid- 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.  107 

ity  and  Sloth  consent  to  be  caged.  Virtue  calculates ; 
weighs  consequences  ;  deliberates  ;  while  Heroism  moves 
due  on  to  the  attainment  of  that  good,  the  overthrow  of  that 
evil,  which  stands  in  the  attitude  of  resistance  before  it.  It 
does  not  stop  to  measure  and  balance  its  forces  with  those 
opposed  to  it,  because  it  recognizes  no  terrestrial  force  high 
er  than  itself,  and  feels  the  soul  superior  to  whatever  of  acci 
dent,  circumstance  or  custom  may  oppose  it.  Virtue  is 
cairn,  collected,  forbearing;  Heroism,  impetuous,  defying, 
advances  eagerly  to  the  combat  with  Fraud,  with  Wrong, 
with  Oppression,  instinctively  recognizing  in  each  its  mortal 
foe.  It  is  Michael  and  his  angels  battling  the  whole  host  of 
Darkness,  and  with  not  less  but  more  of  energy  that  they 
know  intensely  that  the  struggle  can  have  but  one  result. 

4  Life,'  says  Emerson,  '  is  a  festival  only  to  the  wise.  Seen  from 
the  nook  and  chimney-side  of  Prudence,  it  wears  a  rugged  and  danger 
ous  front.  The  violations  of  the  laws  of  Nature  by  our  predecessors 
and  our  cotemporaries  are  punished  in  us  also.****  Insanity,  war, 
plague,  cholera,  famine,  indicate  a  certain  ferocity  in  Nature,  which, 
as  it  had  its  inlet  by  human  crime,  must  have  its  outlet  by  human  suf 
fering.****  Our  Culture,  therefore,  must  not  omit  the  arming  of  the 
man.  Let  him  hear  in  season  that  he  is  born  into  the  state  of  war, 
and  that  the  Commonwealth  and  his  own  well-being  require  that  he 
should  not  go  dancing  in  the  weeds  of  peace,  but  warned,  self-collected, 
and,  neither  defying  nor  dreading  the  thunder,  let  him  take  both  rep 
utation  and  life  in  his  hand,  and,  with  perfect  urbanity,  dare  the  gibbet 
and  the  mob  by  the  absolute  truth  of  his  speech  and  the  rectitude  of 
his  behavior. 

'  Times  of  heroism  (says  this  profound  observer)  are  generally  times 
of  terror,  but  the  day  never  shines  in  which  this  element  may  not  work. 
The  circumstances  of  man,  we  say,  are  historically  somewhat  better 
in  this  country,  and  at  this  hour,  than  perhaps  ever  before.  More 
freedom  exists  for  culture.  It  will  not  now  run  against  an  axe  at  the 
first  step  out  of  the  beaten  path  of  opinion.  But  whoso  is  heroic  will 
always  find  crises  to  try  his  edge.  Whatever  outrages  have  happened 
to  men  may  befall  a  man  again,  and  very  easily  in  a  republic,  if  there 
appear  any  signs  of  a  decay  of  religion.  Human  virtue  demands  her 
champions  and  martyrs,  and  the  trial  of  Persecution  always  proceeds. 


108  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

It  is  but  the  other  day  that  the  brave  Lovejoy  gave  his  breast  to  a 
mob  for  the  rights  of  free  speech  and  opinion,  and  died  when  it  was 
better  not  to  live  !' 

I  think  these  true  utterances  of  a  serene  spirit  justly  mod 
ify,  in  perfect  accordance  with  what  I  have  already  urged 
when  speaking  of  Virtue,  the  casual  remark  of  the  same 
writer,  that  *  every  heroic  act  measures  itself  by  its  contempt 
of  some  external  good.'  Undoubtedly  is  this  true  in  the 
sense  in  which  it  is  intended — that,  seen  through  the  eyes 
of  the  prudent,  the  soul  of  the  soulless,  the  action  of  the 
Hero  is  '  clean  contrary  to  a  sensual  prosperity.'  It  is  a  rid 
dle,  a  madness  ;  at  least  a  trap,  an  ambuscade.  But  from 
the  consciousness  of  the  Hero  himself  no  idea  is  farther  than 
that  of  relinquishment,  or  self-sacrifice.  He  has  but  accepted 
his  place  in  Nature  ;  had  it  been  another's,  he  had  not 
courted  it  to  make  a  parade  of  his  devotion  or  daring.  A 
Washington  never  scores  up  the  hours  he  has  given,  the 
perils  braved,  the  sweet  food  and  soft  indulgence  he  has 
missed,  in  struggling  for  the  salvation  of  his  country.  If  he 
has  been  able  to  serve  her  triumphantly,  it  is  well ;  if  not, 
he  has  at  least  by  action  ripened  and  defined  the  capacities 
of  his  own  being.  Caesar  puts  away  the  proffered  crown 
with  a  sigh  of  regretful  longing  ;  Washington  brushes  it 
aside  as  the  phantom  of  an  abhorred,  unnatural  dream. 

Human  Virtue  is  generally  tinged  and  not  seldom  utterly 
perverted  by  Human  infirmity  ;  yet  I  think  we  are  inclining, 
with  our  easy  assumption  of  immense  superiority  for  our 
time  and  culture,  to  rate  too  meanly,  to  condemn  too  broadly, 
the  ruder,  harsher  shapes  in  which  the  Heroism  of  earlier 
ages  developed  itself.  In  this  wre  fall  into  the  one  great 
error  of  narrow  and  ungenial  Criticism,  in  scanning  the  act 
of  the  individual  on  which  we  pass  judgment,  not  from  his 
point  of  departure  but  our  own.  We  see  the  conqueror 
hurled  on  his  path  of  carnage  and  conflagration,  and  our 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.  109 

hearts  revolt  within  us —  we  almost  chide  God  for  permit 
ting  so  vast  and  wanton  a  ravage.  But  had  we  half  the 
wisdom  and  insight  our  presumptuous  judgment  supposes, 
we  should  doubtless  see  in  every  state  overturned  the  finale 
of  myriads  of  rank  and  crying  oppressions — in  every  City 
desolated,  not  one  merely  but  ten  thousand  righteous  retri 
butions.  Mourn  not,  then,  sir  philanthropist,  over  the  de 
vastating  career  of  Alaric,  the  onward  surge  of  the  Saracen 
wave  from  Mecca  to  Vienna  ;  nay,  water  not  with  your  tears 
the  grave  even  of  hapless  Poland  ;  for,  rely  on  it,  if  any 
true  and  healthful  vitality  had  there  existed,  it  would  have 
vindicated  itself  in  the  hour  of  peril.  Witness  Greece, 
blackened,  not  subdued,  by  the  innumerable  hosts  of  Xerxes; 
witness  Prussia  withstanding  the  force  of  Europe  under  the 
lead  of  the  Great  Frederick.  A  nation  is  not  surprised,  is 
not  circumvented  into  slavery ;  it  can  fall  only  beneath  the 
weight  of  its  own  corruptions.  It  needs  a  Darius  to  make 
the  fortunes  of  an  Alexander.  The  inroad  of  a  hostile  force 
is  to  a  stout-hearted  people  an  electric  shock,  a  ferment,  a 
renovation.  Cast  your  eye  over  the  continent  of  Europe, 
and  in  that  territory  where  Freedom  and  Culture  are  fore 
most,  where  the  rank,  accumulating  abuses  of  many  centu 
ries  have  found  their  grave  in  this,  you  will  recognize  the 
soil  which  has  latest  echoed  the  tread  of  the  invader.  I  trust 
the  clay  has  passed  when  the  blood  of  civilized  man  required 
to  be  quickened  and  purged  by  this  severe  cathartic  ;  but 
we  need  not  therefore  deny  that  War,  too,  had  its  uses  in 
its  day.  Far  hence  be  the  infatuation  which  hailed  the  con 
queror  as  a  demigod  ;  let  us  not  err  as  widely  by  rashly 
pronouncing  him  a  demon. 

But  happily  to  the  Heroism  of  the  Present  and  the  Fu 
ture  is  vouchsafed  a  higher  pathway  of  duty  —  a  holier  en 
deavor.      It  is  called  no  longer  to  thunder  at  the  gates  of 
capitals  —  to   batter   down   the   walls   of  citadels,   in   which 
10 


110  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

venerable  Abuse  has  entrenched  itself.  Though  its  mission 
is  still  as  ever  the  abasement  of  pride,  the  redress  of  wrong, 
the  vindication  of  unshielded  right,  the  exaltation  of  the 
lowly,  it  moves  no  more  to  the  field  of  conflict  with  lumber 
ing  catapult  or  echoing  culverin.  Its  soul  responds  not  now 
to  the  blast  of  the  air-piercing  trumpet ;  it  starts  not  at  the 
rude  summons  of  the  doubling  drum.  It  troubles  itself  no 
more  with  ordnance,  and  towers,  and  armies,  and  Bastiles  ; 
for  it  knows  that  these  dry  bones  of  what  were  once  dominion 
and  power  shall  not  protect  their  wielder  an  hour  from  the 
resistless  might  of  offended  Opinion.  It  sees  the  king  sit 
to-day  in  proud  security  on  his  throne,  surrounded  by  all  of 
strength  there  is  in  walls  and  gates  and  weapons,  and  it 
smiles  at  his  pomp  and  blazonry  as  it  realizes  that  to-morrow 
he  may  be  a  friendless  outcast  and  fugitive,  fleeing  from  the 
stroke  of  a  jest,  a  ballad,  a  newspaper.  To-morrow  the 
demagogue  shall  revel  in  his  halls  in  utter  blindness  to  the 
moral  of  yesterday  ;  and  the  next  day  he  too  shall  have  van 
ished  and  been  forgotten.  But  the  ear  of  true  Heroism  is 
bent  to  catch  the  feeblest  wail  of  suffering  Humanity — its 
eye  is  fixed  intently  on  the  morning-star  which  heralds  a 
brighter  day  for  the  enduring,  the  abject,  the  down-trodden 
millions  of  earth.  It  stretches  forth  an  ungauntleted  but 
sinewy  and  steady  hand,  and  takes  decided  hold  of  this  vast, 
ungainly  framework  of  Society,  and  says  to  what  end  is  this, 
and  this  ?  and  does  it  remain  here  as  a  vital  significance  or 
only  as  a  dead  cumberer  of  the  ground  ?  It  recoils  not  at 
the  shriek  of  pain  or  the  yell  of  indignation  ;  for  it  knows 
by  this  that  it  has  touched  an  ulcer  ;  and,  unhappily,  it 
can  hardly  avoid  touching  one.  It  questions  with  firm 
speech  all  institutions,  observances,  customs,  that  it  may  de 
termine  by  what  mischance  or  illusion  thriftless  Pretence 
and  Knavery  shall  seem  to  batten  on  a  brave  Prosperity, 
while  Labor  vainly  begs  employment,  Skill  lacks  recom 
pense,  and  Worth  pines  for  bread.  Its  answer  to  that  search- 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER.  Ill 

ing  question  of  Divine  arraignment,  '  Where  is  thy  brother 
Abel  ?'  reverses  that  of  the  first  murderer  and  all  who  are 
heirs  of  his  spirit.  It  says  to  ostentatious  Affluence  and 
Splendor,  '  Vaunt  not  to  me  of  your  icy  charities,  your  gifts 
ill-sown  because  without  heart  ;  but  rather  ask  pardon  of 
God  that  as  yet  you  have  diverted  so  large  a  portion  of  his 
stewardship  from  the  great  end  to  which  he  designed  it,  and 
amend.  You  owe  to  the  desolate,  the  crushed,  the  despair 
ing,  not  the  reluctant  dollar,  doled  out  with  coarse  and  un 
just  upbraidings,  but  cordial  sympathy,  and  the  rekindling 
of  hope  in  the  benighted  breast.'  It  says  to  timid  and  dis 
trustful  Power,  '  Trouble  not  yourself  with  these  labyrinth 
ine  passages  of  mazy  policy,  but  lend  your  brawny  arm  to 
extend  far  and  wide  the  blessings  of  Plenty,  Culture,  Im 
provement,  and  strengthen  the  fabric  of  your  sway  by  laying 
broader  and  deeper  its  foundations  in  universal  Happiness 
and  Content.'  It  says  to  Genius,  'Immerse  not  yourself  in 
these  vain  trifles  of  Convenience  or  Economy  to  which  your 
best  energies  have  so  long  been  given.  Why  shall  you 
waste  your  life  in  devising  means  for  the  better  lighting  or 
warming  of  the  stately  mansion,  while  you  give  not  a  thought  to 
the  utter  darkness  and  inclemency  in  which  the  denizens  of 
ten  thousand  adjacent  hovels  are  groping  and  shivering?' 
Thus  fearlessly  the  Heroism  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  erects 
its  judgment-seat  in  every  breast,  and  weighs  in  its  ready  bal 
ances  all  custom,  authority,  assertion.  From  its  serene  ex 
altation  above  the  lowr  ambitions,  the  mousing  schemes,  the 
gross  apprehensions  of  the  sordid,  it  smiles  benignly  on  the 
impotence  of  purblind  hostility  —  the  despot's  bayonet,  the 
bigot's  scowl,  the  witling's  sneer.  This  spirit  shall  yet  ren 
ovate  the  world.  Before  the  calm  earnestness  of  its  gaze 
shall  WTrong,  Slavery,  and  Ignorance  vanish  from  the  face 
of  the  Earth,  and  a  pervading  Intelligence,  a  clearer  Insight, 
a  higher  Life,  shall  irradiate  the  future  pages  of  the  History 
of  Man  ! 


112  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 


IV. 

THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR: 

A    COMMENCEMENT    ADDRESS.* 

FROM  the  fierce  turmoils  and  hot  strifes  of  the  passing 
day,  I  come  at  your  bidding,  to  spend  an  hour  with  you  in 
the  interchange  of  more  quiet  thought,  returning  on  the 
morrow  to  my  wonted  sphere  and  calling.  I  appear  be 
fore  you,  not  as  a  scholar  among  his  equals,  to  descant  on 
themes  common  and  dear  alike  to  all,  but  as  one  whose 
chief  teacher  has  been  the  rugged  world,  and  whose  little 
all  of  knowledge  has  been  gathered  amid  its  rude  jousts  and 
stern  encounters.  You  will  not  expect  me,  therefore,  if 
you  give  me  credit  for  sincerity  and  purpose  in  embracing 
this  opportunity,  to  address  you  in  the  language  nor  unfold 
to  you  thoughts  peculiar  to  the  halls  of  learning.  Were  he 
some  specimen  of  our  fading  Aboriginal  Race  whom  you  had 
thus  summoned  before  you,  you  would  hardly  anticipate  any 
thing  more  than  an  outward  deference  to  the  genius  of  the 
place  —  a  relinquishment,  for  the  occasion,  of  the  blanket,  the 
tomahawk  and  the  war-paint — not  of  whatever  is  intrinsic 
and  essential.  He  could  only  hope  to  justify  your  daring 
choice  by  speaking  to  you  his  own  words — by  an  utterance 
from  the  depths  of  his  own  being.  And  thus  I,  standing  be 
fore  you  in  some  sort  a  humble  representative  of  that  large 
class  sometimes  termed  the  se//"-educated,  by  others  (perhaps 
more  properly)  the  ?^weducated,  shall  speak  to  you  from  the 

*  Before  the  Literary  Societies  of  Hamilton  College,  July  23d.  1°44. 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  113 

heart  of  that  class  —  truths  which  may  or  may  not  have  long 
since  resounded  through  the  halls  of  our  Universities,  agita 
ting  their  venerable  dust,  but  which  in  either  case  are  certain 
ere  long  to  make  themselves  heard  and  respected. 

I  have  not  hesitated  to  choose  for  my  theme  on  this  occa 
sion —  THE  DISCIPLINE  AND  DUTIES  OF  THE  SCHOLAR, 
vast  and  lofty  though  it  be,  and  imperfect  as  have  been  my 
opportunities  for  its  thorough  appreciation  and  discussion. 
Few  as  are  the  fragments  of  hours  that  I  have  been  able  to 
seize  for  its  contemplation,  I  am  well  aware  that  on  its  proper 
apprehension  depends,  in  great  degree,  the  Progress  and  the 
Well-being  of  the  Human  Race.  You  need  not  fear,  my 
friends  !  that  the  advantages  of  a  thorough  Education,  nor  of 
a  thoroughly  educated  Class,  will  be  undervalued  in  our  day, 
and  especially  by  us  weary  marchers  and  combatants  along 
the  parched  highways,  beneath  the  fervid  sun  of  active  life, 
who  have  been  able  but  to  scoop,  as  it  were,  here  and  there 
a  handfull  from  the  grateful,  invigorating  waters  of  Know 
ledge,  as  they  danced  and  bubbled  across  our  too  eager,  head 
long  course.  O,  not  from  our  panting  ranks  will  ever  arise 
the  cry  that  solid  and  symmetric  Learning  is  a  boon  to  be  re 
jected  or  lightly  prized  !  The  small  coins  of  knowledge  which 
we  awkwardly  handle  and  dispense  are  constantly  reminding 
us  of  the  priceless  ingots  of  golden  treasure  which  for  us  lie 
buried  in  the  far  recesses  of  halls  like  these,  from  which  a 
grim  Fate  has  forever  debarred  us.  Limited  as  may  have 
been  our  opportunities,  it  is  not  to  us  a  sealed  truth  that  the 
Present  is  only  to  be  rightly  read  and  interpreted  in  the  full 
light  reflected  from  the  Past.  We  are  not  unaware  that  this 
uneasy,  jostling  throng  of  to-day  is  but  a  reproduction,  with 
slight  permutations,  of  the  sweating,  striving  crowds  of  a  thou 
sand  yesterdays,  to  be  again  and  again  represented,  in  the 
several  throngs  of  countless  to-morrows.  We  are  well  aware 
that  faithful,  graphic  History  is  a  diviner  as  well  as  a  judge — 
that  her  magic  mirror  gives  back  the  faces  glowing  around  us 
10* 


114  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

as  well  as  the  forms  in  dust  beneath  us,  and  that  he  who 
rightly,  intelligently,  reads  of  Aristides  and  Cleon,  of  Brutus 
and  Catiline,  of  smooth  Augustus  and  deified  Nero,  may  turn 
at  once  from  the  musty  chronicle  and  see  the  living  charac 
ters  stalking  eagerly  around  him.  Must  he  not  discern  the 
Phocion  of  our  Republic  in  that  noble  relic  of  our  heroic 
elder  time,  the  oft-baffled,  defeated,  decried,  but  dauntless, 
bravely  struggling,  unconquerable  octogenarian  of  Quincy  ? 
Might  he  not  be  tempted  at  last  to  suspect  that  the  difference 
between  one  age  and  another  exists  quite  as  often  in  its  chron 
iclers  as  in  its  actors,  and  that  the  perishing  hieroglyphics 
of  Tlascala  and  Quito  would  reveal  heroism  as  devoted  and 
admirable  as  any  of  that  more  felicitously  recorded  by  Homer 
or  Polybius,  had  we  but  the  skill  to  interpret  them  as  thor 
oughly  ?  In  short,  it  is  not  alone  the  Educated  who  have 
learned  that  a  knowledge  of  Man  is  the  central  truth,  to 
which  the  study  of  men  and  their  acts  must  be  subsidiary ; 
and  that  the  mingled  web  of  Divine  beneficence  and  Human 
infirmity,  termed  History,  is  to  be  rightly  scanned  only  in  pro 
portion  as  we  apprehend  its  beginning  and  its  destined 
conclusion. 

There  is,  there  must  be,  a  preeminently  Educated  Class 
among  us — I  do  not  merely  admit  the  notorious  fact ;  I  per 
ceive  the  vital  necessity.  Whether  the  distance  between  that 
class  and  the  many  should  or  should  not  be  as  broad  and 
palpable  as  at  present,  is  not  now  the  question.  My  theme 
implies  its  existence,  and  assumes  that  the  greater  number  are 
relatively  uneducated.  However  we  might  desire  the  universal 
diffusion  and  possession  of  the  knowledge  now  confined  to 
this  class,  we  know  it  is,  and  long  must  be,  impossible.  Its 
attainment  exacts  a  devotion  of  time  and  of  means,  to  say 
nothing  of  tastes  and  habits,  which  can  only  be  given  by  the 
comparatively  few.  My  theme,  then,  involves  the  compound 
inquiry — What  should  be  the  nature  vt  the  education  of  the 
more  cultivated  class?  — Under  what  conditions  should  Learn- 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  115 

ing  be  acquired  ?  — What  ends  should  it  contemplate  ?  — What 
advantages  secure  to  its  possessors  ?  I  shall  proceed  to  dis 
cuss  it. 

I  would  insist,  then,  as  the  primary  requisition  in  the 
Discipline  of  the  Scholar,  on  a  THOROUGH  AND  HARMONIOUS 
DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  PHYSICAL  MAN.  I  place  this  first,  not 
as  more  important  than  Moral  and  Intellectual  culture,  but  as 
the  proper  foundation  of  all  culture  unto  perfection.  You  need 
not  cite  me  to  instances  of  intellectual  giants  who  are  physi 
cally  dwarfs  —  of  puny  Genius  and  hypochondriac  Wit  —  you 
may -as  well  tell  me  that  the  foetid,  pestilent  purlieus  of  a  great 
City  are  favorable  to  health  and  longevity,  because  men  have 
grown  there  to  stature  and  vigor  and  died  in  hale  old  age.  As 
well  tell  me  that  the  bivouac  and  the  battle-field  are  favorable 
to  long  life,  because  men  have  died  peacefully  at  ninety,  after 
a  half  century  of  camps  and  sieges.  These  are  exceptions, 
which  rather  establish  the  rule  than  invalidate  it.  '  A  sound 
mind  in  a  sound  body' — that  is  the  order  of  Nature  —  you 
may  find  a  sound  mind  elsewhere,  but  it  will  be  most  un 
fitly  and  inconveniently  bestowed.  The  body  can  endure  a 
divorce  far  better  than  the  mind.  In  fact,  we  see  bodies 
breathing,  moving,  acting  all  around  us,  which  seem  to  per 
form  their  proper  functions  tolerably  with  the  aid  of  very  little 
mind  —  almost  none  —  but  a  healthful,  clear  mind  in  a  dis 
eased,  decrepit,  decaying  body  is  a  far  more  pitiable  spectacle. 
It  is  a  diamond  in  the  clutch  of  a  lunatic  —  to  be  gazed  at  a 
moment  in  wonder,  then  hurled  into  the  depths  of  the  sea. 
It  is  a  freight  of  the  wealth  of  the  Indies,  embarked  in  a  tot 
tering  wherry,  which  is  certain  to  sink  in  the  first  tempest. 
WThen  I  look  around  me,  and  recall  the  many  noble,  and 
brilliant,  and  greatly  useful,  who  have  sunk  after  a  meteor- 
like  career  into  premature  graves,  under  the  assaults  of 
diseases  insensibly  contracted  during  their  years  of  study 
and  mental  acquisition  —  diseases  from  which  any  tolerable 
knowledge,  any  careful  investigation,  of  the  laws  of  Man's 


116  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

physical  being  must  have  preserved  them  —  lam  impelled  to 
sound  the  alarm  of  danger  alike  to  teachers  and  to  students 
—  to  plead  for  the  generation  now  in  process  of  develop 
ment  and  the  generation  to  follow  —  and  to  warn  the  direc 
tors  of  Education  of  the  fearful  responsibility  which  rests 
upon  them  —  a  responsibility  which  it  is  but  charity  to  pre 
sume  very  many  of  them  do  not  even  dimly  comprehend. 
For,  assuredly,  they  could  not  know  that  the  hundreds  of 
young  men  committed  by  anxious  love  to  their  charge  were 
growing  up  in  almost  total  ignorance  even  that  they  had 
physical  constitutions  to  nurture  and  bring  to  vigorous  matu 
rity — in  utter  ignorance,  quite  commonly,  of  many  of  the 
inflexible  laws  on  which  their  physical  well-being  depend  — 
and  not  adopt  some  adequate  measures  to  counteract  and 
avert  the  danger.  And  yet,  how  little  is  systematically  done, 
how  little  is  even  consistently,  authoritatively  said,  in  our 
seminaries  of  Learning,  of  the  necessity  and  nature  of  a  true 
Physical  Education  ?  Shall  this  deficiency  continue  ? 

True  Education  is  Development.  It  does  not  create  the 
statue  from  the  marble  —  it  only  finds  it  therein  and  exposes 
it  to  the  unimpeded,  admiring  gaze.  But  in  what  do  our 
Educational  processes  tend  to  develop  the  physical  man? 
From  the  high,  uncomfortable  bench  on  which  the  child  sits  for 
hours  at  the  common  school  in  abhorred  constraint  and  suffer 
ing,  watching  in  envy  the  flitting  of  every  bird  by  the  window, 
to  the  highest  University,  so  called,  we  find  scarcely  a  recog 
nition  that  his  mind  is  encased  in  a  tenement  of  flesh  and 
blood.  He  has  teachers  of  Reading  and  of  Grammar  —  Pro 
fessors  of  Mathematics  and  of  Ethics  —  of  Languages  and  of 
Metaphysics  —  but  the  teachers  of  the  laws  of  his  own  struc 
ture  and  relations  to  Nature — the  Professors  of  Health,  of 
Strength,  of  Longevity,  I  think  are  mainly  yet  to  be  appoint 
ed.  Yet  this  ought  not  to  be.  The  position  of  the  young 
student  is  surrounded  by  peculiar  perils.  From  the  field,  the 
forest,  the  bustling  ways  of  home  and  neighborhood,  he  is 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  117 

transplanted  at  once  to  academic  shades,  whose  genius  de 
mands  quiet,  meditation,  seclusion.  No  longer  is  the  climbing 
of  rugged  hills,  or  the  levelling  of  stubborn  woods,  the  prep 
aration  for  the  evening's  study  and  the  night's  repose.  He  is 
instantly  confronted  by  two  formidable  dangers  —  that  of 
falling  into  habits  of  physical  indolence  and  excessive  study, 
inducing  indigestion  and  its  long  train  of  enfeebling  horrors  ; 
or  his  lithe  frame  revolts  at  the  galling  bondage,  and  he 
becomes  a  hater  of  books,  a  neglecter  of  studies,  and  gradu 
ally  addicts  himself  to  habits  of  turbulence  and  wild  excess. 
Henceforward  his  career  need  not  be  indicated  —  its  course 
and  its  end  are  inevitable. 

I  must  press  this  point  farther,  for  I  feel  that  a  reform  with 
regard  to  it  is  most  essential  to  the  usefulness  and  honor  of 
our  seminaries.  In  too  many  instances  has  a  Collegiate 
course,  in  view  of  all  its  consequences,  proved  a  positive 
curse  to  a  large  proportion  of  the  Class  which  sanguinely 
entered  upon  it  as  the  unmistakable  liijrh  road  to  eminent 
usefulness,  recompense  and  fame.  Alas  !  a  deadly  serpent 
lurked  in  those  calm,  bright  bowers  which  seemed  to  their 
first  eager  glances  so  alluring.  A  few  days  of  eager  study 
jaded  their  spirits  and  unstrung  their  nerves  ;  a  languor  and 
lassitude  crept  over  them  ;  they  fell  into  the  company  of  those 
who  had  traveled  that  road  before  them,  who  suggested  — 
"All  study  is  dry  work  —  let  us  solace  ourselves  this  evening 
with  a  bottle  and  a  feast."  Thus  is  laid  the  foundation  of 
habits  which  have  dragged  too  many  a  youth  of  rare  promise 
down  to  an  untimely  and  dishonored  crave  —  which  have 
quenched  the  fond,  proud  hopes  of  admiring  relatives  in  a 
deluge  of  sin  and  shame. 

Now  it  is  the  idlest  folly  to  waste  words  in  declaiming 
against  these  evils — we  must  trace  them  to  their  source  and 
apply  there  an  adequate  preventive.  We  must  begin  by 
teaching  our  Young  Men  the  nature  of  their  own  frames,  and 
the  shocking  violence  they  do  to  that  nature  by  overtaxing  its 


118  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

powers,  and  then  drugging  it  with  narcotics  and  stimulants  to 
reanimate  them.  We  must  demonstrate  to  them  the  fact  that 
any  use  of  stimulants  is  a  certain  and  fearful  evil  —  that  the 
effect  we  term  drunkenness  is  only  a  benevolent  effort  of 
Nature  to  expel  the  monster  which  has  been  treacherously  ad 
mitted  to  her  most  sacred  and  vital  recesses  —  and  that  the 
evil  commences  with  the  first  particle  of  such  substances 
which  is  thrust  upon  her,  and  the  penalty  is  signal  and  cer 
tain  although  the  second  glass  were  never  taken.  All  these 
truths  and  the  kindred  objections  to  narcotics,  may  easily 
enough  be  scientifically  demonstrated — the  mischief  is  that 
they  are  not.  A  man  properly  instructed,  and  as  yet  un- 
corrupted,  would  no  more  think  of  swallowing  Alcohol  than 
live  coals  or  arsenic.  And  yet  many  have  actually  acquired 
the  basest  of  habits — that  of  partaking  of  notoriously  hurtful 
substances  merely  to  produce  a  temporary  and  pernicious 
elevation  of  the  spirits — within  the  precincts  of  our  very 
Universities  !  Shame  is  it  to  human  ignorance — shame  es 
pecially  to  those  whose  duty  it  was  to  dispel  that  ignorance  in 
the  case  of  these  victims,  and  yet  neglected  it !  They  .can 
not  be  excused,  but  we  may  drop  a  tear  of  pity  for  the  vic 
tim  of  their  neglect,  so  distorted  and  misdeveloped  that  he 
knows  how  to  construe  Greek,  yet  does  not  know  enough  to 
reject  and  loathe  Tobacco  ! 

You  have  already  anticipated  my  statement  that,  to  a  true 
and  healthful  development  of  the  Man,  I  deem  a  constant 
participation  in  Manual  Labor  indispensable.  Labor !  blessed 
boon  of  God,  to  alleviate  the  horrors  and  purify  the  tenden 
cies  of  our  fallen  state  !  when  shall  its  benefits  and  its  joys  be 
brought  home  to  each  and  to  all  ?  We  may  make  it  a  curse 
and  a  burden  by  so  regarding  it,  as  we  may  any  other  bless 
ing  from  Heaven,  but  the  truth  is  irrepressible  that  only  he 
who  is  familiar  with  Labor  and  loves  it  can  either  improve  or 
enjoy  life.  The  man  whose  only  stimulant  to  exertion  in 
any  field  is  the  hope  of  individual  gain,  can  hardly  have  risen 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  119 

above  the  condition  of  a  slave.  We  must  learn  to  be  true 
workers  —  our  frames  need  it — our  unperverted  impulses 
demand  it  —  our  very  souls,  if  unstifled,  cry  out  for  it.  Most 
earnestly,  then,  do  I  record  my  protest  against  the  all  but 
universal  prescription  which  divorces  entirely  profound  Study 
from  Manual  Labor  —  which,  in  its  attention  to  the  intellec 
tual  and  moral  nature  of  the  student,  forgets  that  he  has  also 
a  physical  frame  to  be  developed  and  invigorated.  Of  course, 
you  will  not  understand  me  as  assuming  that  the  usual  routine 
of  student  life  forgets  or  disregards  the  necessity  of  physical 
exercise  —  I  know  better.  I  will  not  doubt  that  wlieiwrr 
thoughtful,  conscientious  and  cultivated  men  have  clwruv  of 
the  education  of  youth,  there  are,  there  must  be,  abundant 
inculcations  of  the  necessity  of  exercise  and  the  value  of 
health  ;  also  of  the  danger  of  losing  the  latter  through  the 
neglect  of  the  former.  I  will  not  doubt  that  abundant  oppor 
tunities  and  facilities  for  exercise  arc  everywhere  afforded. 
Yet  what  is  the  result?  Do  the  mass  of  our  young  men 
finish  their  studies  with  stronger  constitutions,  sturdier  frames, 
more  athletic  limbs,  than  they  brought  away  from  their  pa 
rental  firesides  ?  Not  within  the  sphere  of  my  observation  — 
far  otherwise.  I  have  known  many  dyspepsias,  consumptions, 
debilities,  which  traced  their  origin  to  seminaries  :  I  do 
not  remember  any  that  were  cured  there  ;  I  have  known  the 
stout  lad  in  the  district  school  who  graduated  a  feeble  invalid 
from  the  university.  My  conviction  is  that  the  Physical  de 
partment  of  Education  has  decidedly  retrograded  since  the 
days  of  Greek  freedom  and  glory.  Our  prevalent  error  is  not 
one  of  method  and  detail  —  it  is  fundamental.  We  have  lost 
the  true  basis  ordained  of  God  for  the  harmonious  and  health 
ful  development  of  the  whole  human  being,  in  separating  the 
education  of  the  Head  from  the  education  of  the  Hands.  We 
have  dared  to  disregard  that  Divine  fiat,  first  of  punishments 
and  therefore  first  also  of  mercies  —  'In  the  sweat  of  thy 
face  shalt  thou  eat  bread !'  Shunning  this  appointed  path. 


120  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

we  have  sought  out  inventions,  which  we  term  Exercise, 
Recreation,  Relaxation.  Heaven  placidly  but  inexorably  disal 
lows  them.  I  do  not  say  that  for  the  cramped,  soul-dwarfed, 
undeveloped  miner,  delving  for  six  days  of  each  week  in  some 
stinted  Egyptian  labyrinth  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  there 
may  not  be  appropriate  recreation  in  the  free  air  and  sunshine. 
Malign  Circumstance  has  grudged  him  a  full  development — 
his  class  are  significantly  advertised  for  as  '  Hands  wanted' 
—  not  men.  But  to  the  true  and  whole  man  each  successive 
duty  is  the  proper  relief  from  the  preceding,  and  in  the  regu 
lar  alternation  of  labors — now  those  which  tax  mainly  the 
Intellect,  next  those  which  appeal  mainly  to  the  Sinews  —  is 
the  needed  relaxation  best  attained.  Thus  only  shall  Life  be 
rendered  consistent  and  harmonious — thus  shall  each  hour 
be  dignified  and  rendered  heroic.  The  division  of  the  Race 
into  two  unequal,  contrasted  classes — the  few  Thinkers,  the 
many  Workers  —  has  been  and  is  the  source  of  many  and 
sore  evils,  including  the  loss  of  the  fitting  and  manly  inde 
pendence  of  each.  It  is  the  source  of  infinite  servility,  false 
hood  and  mean  compliance.  Not  till  we  shall  have  emanci 
pated  the  Many  from  the  subjection  of  taking  their  thoughts 
at  second-hand  from  the  Few,  may  we  hope  to  accomplish 
much  for  the  upraising  of  the  long  trampled  masses.  Not  till 
we  have  emancipated  the  Few  from  the  equally  degrading 
necessity  of  subsisting  on  the  fruits  of  the  physical  toil  of  the 
Many,  can  we  secure  to  the  more  cultivated  and  intellectual 
their  proper  and  healthful  ascendency  over  the  less  affluent  in 
mental  wealth.  The  plowman  recognizes  and  appreciates 
Genuis,  Talent,  Learning;  but  he  finds  that  these  are  too 
often  directed  to  the  acquisition  of  wealth  and  luxury  by 
means  which  add  little  to  the  aggregate  of  human  comforts, 
and  rather  subtract  from  his  own  especial  share  of  them.  The 
reprobate  dreads  the  rebuke  of  the  anointed  reprover  of  sin  ; 
but  says,  '  He  will  hardly  venture  to  arraign  pointedly  the 
transgressions  of  one  who  contributes  liberally  to  the  salary 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.          121 

which  barely  supports  his  expensive  family.'  Thus  the  divorce 
of  Learning  from  Manual  Labor — the  absolute  dependence  of 
the  Educated  on  the  Uneducated  class  for  the  means  of  sup 
plying  its  physical  wants  —  becomes  the  source  of  endless  and 
fatal  compromises  of  Principle  and  perversions  of  Intellectual 
power. 

It  avails  nothing  to  point  me  to  the  failure,  if  it  shall  be  so 
termed,  of  past  attempts  to  reunite  Study  with  Physical  exer 
tion —  the  affluent  mind  with  the  ready  and  skillful  hand. 
These  failures  only  prove  the  inadequacy  of  the  effort,  not 
that  the  object  is  unworthy,  nor  even  unattainable.  They 
have  been  impelled  too  often  by  low  ideas  of  their  own  scope 
and  purpose  —  by  a  consideration  of  the  necessity  to  the  stu 
dent  not  so  much  of  Labor  as  of  Bread.  Commenced  in  this 
spirit,  the  number  of  workers  will  inevitably  dwindle  till  only 
those  labor  who  must  subsist  on  the  fruits  of  that  labor ;  soon 
the  class  distinction  of  Gentlemen  and  Peasants  reappears  ; 
invidious  comparisons,  sneers  and  sarcasms  beget  hatreds  and 
collisions;  and  one  class  or  the  other  —  probably  both  — 
make  their  exit ;  the  institution  explodes  ;  and  the  superficial 
multitude  unhesitatingly  pronounce  the  idea  of  uniting  Labor 
with  Study  proved  impracticable  and  absurd  ! 

The  fatal  error  here  was  obviously  that  of  putting  the  new 
wine  into  old  bottles.  The  impulse  to  the  enterprise  was  not 
a  conviction  of  the  necessity,  healthfullness  and  dignity  of  La 
bor —  not  even  the  idea  of  Duty  as  commanding  a  participa 
tion  in  the  toil  needful  to  the  sustenance  and  comfort  of  Man 
—  but  at  bottom  the  pauper's  necessity,  the  slave's  dread  of 
the  lash.  This  may  facilitate  and  insure  the  production  of 
corn  —  never  of  true  men.  Not  until  Labor  shall  be  joyfully 
and  proudly  accepted  as  a  genial  and  beneficent  destiny  — 
us  the  needful  exercise  and  complement  of  our  else  unde 
veloped  or  perverted  faculties  —  may  we  rationally  hope  for 
any  permanently  satisfactory  result. 

And  here  you  will  permit  me  to.  hazard  a  criticism  on  so 


122  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

much  of  our  educational  processes  —  no  great  portion  of 
any  college  course,  I  will  hope  —  as  are  undertaken  for  the 
sake,  it  is  said,  of  '  disciplining  the  mind.'  I  ask  a  student- 
friend  why  he,  who  is  aspiring  to  the  Christian  Ministry, 
should  devote  so  much  time  to  a  science  so  little  pertinent 
to  his  future  calling  as  Mathematics,  and  he  answers  that  the 
study  of  Mathematics  is  an  admirable  discipline  for  the 
mind !  Need  I  say  to  you  that  I  neither  appreciate  the 
force  of  the  reason  nor  discern  the  benefits  of  the  discipline  ? 
I  do  not  say  that  this  or  any  other  science  may  not  be  emi 
nently  calculated  to  subserve  the  purpose  contemplated  —  I 
simply  demur  to  the  necessity  or  fitness  of  pursuing  mental 
discipline  apart  from  healthful  mental  activity  in  the  sphere 
of  practical  life.  Does  the  youth  contemplate  the  pursuit 
of  Astronomy,  Engineering,  or  any  sphere  of  usefulness 
requiring  the  aid  of  the  exact  sciences — then  let  him  devote 
his  student  years  in  part  to  Mathematics,  and  master  them 
thoroughly.  But  if  he  contemplate  pursuing  either  of  the 
three  leading  professions,  Theology,  Law  or  Physic  —  I  dis 
trust  the  wisdom  of  such  a  devotion  of  his  time.  This  life 
is  too  short  to  justify  the  acquisition  of  abstruse  sciences  on 
such  grounds.  The  mind  is  best  disciplined  when  it  finds 
its  pleasures  in  its  duties  —  when  all  its  laborious  acquisi 
tions  are  turned  to  direct  and  palpable  account  —  when  its 
every  impulse  is  toward  utility  and  beneficence.  We  give 
the  child  playthings  because  we  know  not  or  have  not  what 
we  should  give  him  —  did  we  know  all  things,  command  all 
things,  we  should  improve  his  every  desire  to  subserve 
directly  some  useful  end.  His  toys  would  be  tools,  or  at 
least  demonstrations  of  some  truth  adapted  to  his  opening 
mind.  He  should  be  wiser  for  every  walk  —  more  skillful 
for  each  hour's  diversion!,  In  our  ignorance  or  fond  thought 
lessness,  we  waste  half  the  golden  opportunities  of  the  most 
impressible  period  of  life,  and  misimprove  a  portion  of  the 
remainder.  It  were  well  to  remember  that  a  benign  Creator 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  123 

has  enfolded  the  mental  casket  we  contemplate,  and  that  it 
needs  not  to  be  pressed  and  fashioned,  but  simply  developed. 
The  discipline  it  requires,  if  unstifled,  unperverted,  is  induc 
tion  into  whatever  is  peculiar  to  that  sphere  of  laudable 
endeavor  to  which  it  is  specially  devoted. 

And  here  let  me  state  fairly  the  objection  of  the  Utilitarian 
school  to  the  acquisition  of  the  Dead  Languages,  which  I 
find  often  commented  on  and  controverted  without  being  at 
all  apprehended.  We  do  not,  we  never  did,  deny  the  utility 
of  these  Languages  to  many  —  it  would  ill  become  us  to  do 
so  —  ill  become  any  rational  beings.  We  admit  —  nay,  in 
sist,  that  there  are  large  classes  to  which  a  thorough  know 
ledge  of  one  or  more  of  the  Languages  in  which  the  noblest, 
most  inspiring  ideas  of  Antiquity  lie  inurned,  is  indispen 
sable.  The  Christian  theologian  needs  a  mastery  of  Greek 
and  Hebrew ;  the  Physician,  the  Botanist,  the  thorough 
Lawyer,  of  Latin.  But,  beyond  and  above  these,  the  world 
needs  and  is  deeply  indebted  to  the  illustrious  body  of  Schol 
ars,  Learned  Men,  who  as  Professors,  (()  most  desecrated 
term !)  Historians,  Philosophers,  Poets,  Critics,  are  constantly 
irradiating  and  instructing  the  Present  by  the  light  of  the 
Past.  Noblest,  least  obtrusive  of  our  teachers,  we  could  not 
dispense  with  these  —  we  are  in  no  danger  of  honoring  them 
too  highly.  But  it  is  not  given  to  every  man  —  it  is  permit 
ted  to  few  —  to  be  of  these,  and  it  is  preposterous  to  subject 
the  multitude  of  comparatively  educated  persons  to  their 
ordeal  in  the  idle  hope  of  producing  any  such  result.  You 
can  not  make  Scholars  of  these — you  have  enough  to  do 
to  render  them  passable  attorneys  and  doctors,  in  the  com 
mon  way.  And,  if  they  are  to  be  such  and  nothing  more, 
you  must  allow  me  to  believe  that  their  College  years  might 
be  better  devoted  than  to  the  acquisition  of  Greek  and 
Latin  —  oftener  practically  forgotten  in  two  years  than  really 
learned  in  three.  The  simple  and  notorious  fact  that  they 
usually  arc  so  forgotten  —  that  they  are  to  most  educated 


124  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

men  (so  called)  in  the  busy  walks  of  life  but  a  foggy  remin 
iscence  of  dull  days  wasted  and  dry  tasks  slighted,  is  their 
sufficient  condemnation. 

The  truth  is  that  the  fatal  evil  of  pecuniary  dependence  is 
not  always  unfelt  even  by  those  who  hold  the  responsible 
position  of  directors  of  the  highest  education  of  our  youth. 
A  President  or  Professor  who  should  frankly  tell  the  parents 
of  a  proffered  student  that  their  son  might  make  an  excellent 
blacksmith  or  carpenter,  but  would  be  neither  eminent  nor 
happy  at  the  bar  nor  in  the  pulpit,  would  probably  incur 
resentment  and  a  withdrawal  of  patronage  —  and  yet  how 
often  ought  such  truth  to  be  frankly,  kindly  told  !  It  would 
frequently  save  much  waste  of  energies  and  means,  much 
weariness  and  heart-ache.  The  true  though  rugged  man 
who  has  nobly  gathered  a  competence  by  following  the  plow, 
would  feel  offended  if  assured  that  his  son  was  so  fit  for  no 
other  avocation  as  that  of  a  farmer  —  though  that  were  a 
genuine  tribute  of  respect  to  the  dignity  of  the  vocation  and 
the  honest  worth  of  the  youth. 

We  are  here  confronted  by  the  low  idea  \vhich  every 
where  prevails  of  the  true  rank  of  useful  manual  toil  —  by 
none  so  cherished,  as  by  those  who  themselves  toil,  except 
by  the  empty  demagogue  who  windily  babbles  in  bar-rooms 
of  the  rights  and  dignity  of  Labor,  hoping  to  compass  there 
by  the  means  of  avoiding  Labor.  The  farmer  will  not  feel 
gratified,  though  he  should,  if  assured  that  he  can  give  his 
son  no  fitter,  no  better  calling  than  his  own  ;  the  hope  of  the 
family  must  be  trained  to  the  chicanery  of  Law  or  the  futil 
ity  of  Medicine  in  order  that  he  may  duly  honor  his  kin 
dred,  though  he  may  be  reluctant  to  enter,  or  at  best  have 
manifested  no  genius  or  taste  for  the  calling  thus  thrust  upon 
him.  This  is  in  the  true  spirit  of  the  illiterate  farmer  who 
insisted  on  having  a  sermon  in  Greek,  on  the  ground  that 
he  paid  the  clergyman  for  the  best,  and  would  have  it. 
Thus  our  higher  Education  becomes  a  bed  of  Procrustes  — 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  125 

excellent  for  the  few  whom  Nature  has  just  adapted  to  it  — 
but  a  very  different  affair  for  all  beside.  We  shall  learn  yet 
to  study  the  unfolding  genius  of  the  youth  —  to  be  guided 
by  this  rather  than  attempt  to  overrule  it  —  and  to  leave  to 
the  directors  of  Education  a  larger  discretion  in  the  premi 
ses  than  they  have  usually  hitherto  enjoyed. 

In  the  lamentable  divorce  of  Learning  from  Labor — of 
the  highest  Intellectual  culture  from  the  greatest  Industrial 
capacity  and  efficiency  —  do  I  detect  the  origin  of  that  de 
plorable  discord  which  prevails  between  the  teachings  of  our 
Schoolmen  and  th?  edicts  of  Legislators,  between  the  les 
sons  of  our  Literature  and  the  spirit  of  Communities  and 
States,  with  regard  to  Political  Economy.  Vainly  do  our 
Colleges,  the  wide  world  over,  indoctrinate  nearly  all  the 
leading  minds  of  the  age  with  the  distinctive  principles  of 
Adam  Smith  and  his  followers  —  their  labor  may  be  lighter 
than  that  of  Sysiphus,  but  their  fortune  is  inevitably  like  his. 
On  a  few  minds,  remarkable  rather  for  speculative  than  for 
practical  ability,  they  make  a  durable  impression  ;  but  with 
the  majority  their  plausible  inculcations  are  overborne  by  the 
observation  and  experience  of  a  few  succeeding  years. 
Those  originally  most  captivated  by  the  theory  of  '  Laisscz 
faire,'  soon  discover,  on  passing  out  into  the  actual  world, 
that  all  Life  is,  all  Legislation  must  be,  in  contradiction  to 
its  spirit.  A  man  who  should  be  left  to  grow  up  on  this 
fundamental  principle  of  the  Free  Trade  philosophy,  would, 
if  by  some  miraculous  chance  he  survived  to  maturity  at  all, 
be  a  most  unmitigated  savage,  and  a  bad  specimen  even  of 
that  forlorn  condition.  A  young  Nation  which  should  really 
and  fully  adopt  the  corresponding  theory  of  National  Econ 
omy,  and,  by  dispensing  with  all  Industrial  and  Commer 
cial  Legislation  of  its  own,  leave  'its  Labor  and  Trade 
wholly  at  the  mercy  of  Foreign  regulation,  would  soon  have 
little  left  wherewith  to  tempt  the  cupidity  of  Foreign  policy. 
There  never  yet  was,  there  never  can  be,  a  Government  of 
11* 


126  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

a  civilized,  accessible,  enlightened,  wealthy  Nation  which 
acted  consistently  and  thoroughly  on  the  principle  of  Free 
Trade  for  a  single  generation  —  no,  not  for  ten  years.  Su 
perficial  men  may  dilate  on  the  unsafeness  of  following  The 
ory,  the  discrepancies  between  Theory  and  Practice,  and  the 
like  fig-leaves  of  seeming  Wisdom  wherewith  Folly  is  wont  to 
enrobe  herself — but  there  is  in  truth  no  such  discrepancy. 
A  sound  theory  is  always  a  safe  one  —  it  may  fearlessly  be  re 
duced  to  practice  and  followed  to  the  end.  When  a  States 
man  rises  in  your  halls  of  Legislation  and  tells  you  that  a  cer 
tain  theory  is  indeed  sound  and  worthy  of  general  acceptance, 
but  it  must  be  postponed  in  this  particular  instance,  because 
of  the  depression  of  Trade,  the  distresses  of  the  Laboring 
Class,  or  on  any  such  ground,  be  sure  that  either  he  or  his 
theory  is  hollow  and  untrustworthy.  More  probably,  both  of 
them  are  so.  For,  were  the  theory  sound,  the  earliest  moment 
would  be  the  best  moment  to  reduce  it  to  practice,  and  what 
ever  the  embarrassments  existing,  they  but  furnish  additional 
arguments  for  its  instant  adoption.  Their  existence  argues 
a  wrong  somewhere,  and  demands  that  every  known  wrong 
be  instantly  redressed.  To  say  that  a  theory  is  sound,  and 
yet  act  in  contradiction  thereto,  is  to  dethrone  eternal  Right 
and  exalt  a  fleeting,  unstable,  unrighteous  Expediency  in  its 
stead.  Whatever  is  true  in  theory  is  desirable  in  practice, 
and  desirable  to-day. 

But  the  elemental  Free  Trade  assumption  is  not  true. 
'  The  best  government  is'  not  '  that  which  governs  least,'  or 
no  government  at  all  were  clearly  better  still.  '  Trade  will' 
not  '  regulate  itself  so  as  to  secure  even  '  the  greatest  good 
of  the  greatest  number,'  though  I  insist  that  it  is  not  the  good 
of  the  greatest  number  but  of  the  whole  number  which  com 
munities  and  governments  are  bound  unceasingly  to  seek  and 
to  secure.  It  is  not  true  that  the  largest  possible  average  or 
general  reward  of  Industry  is  that  which  it  would  secure  in 
the  total  absence  of  Governmental  regulation.  The  grain- 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  127 

grower  of  the  valley  of  the  Wabash  or  Illinois,  for  example, 
can  never  receive  the  fullest  reward  of  his  toil,  the  largest 
return  for  his  bounteous  harvests,  while  the  producer  of  his 
cloths,  his  wares,  his  glass,  his  cutlery,  &c.  remains  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  The  fact  that  they  do  remain 
there  compels  a  larger  export  thither  of  his  bulky  Agricultural 
staples,  at  an  enormous  cost  for  transportation,  and  inevita 
bly  involves  a  corresponding  and  permanent  depression  of  the 
prices  of  those  staples.  If  England  may  obtain  Wheat  from 
the  Black  Sea.  and  the  Baltic  at  an  average  cost  of  one  dollar 
a  bushel,  (as  she  con,  very  nearly,)  then  his  must  be  largely 
sold  in  England  at  that  price,  though  the  cost  of  transporting 
it  thither  amounts  to  three-fourths  of  that  sum.  The  residue, 
small  as  it  is,  must  be  the  standard  price  of  his  wheat  at  the 
point  of  production.  But  change  your  policy  so  as  to  bring 
the  producers  of  most  of  the  fabrics  which  minister  to  his 
convenience  and  comfort  from  Sheffield  and  Birmingham  to 
the  banks  of  his  own  gentle  rivtn-s,  or  of  their  more  impetu 
ous  tributaries,  or  divert  a  portion  of  the  grain-growTers  already 
there  into  the  various  pursuits  of  Manufacture,  and  now  you 
have  insured  a  higher  price  for  Grain  and  a  larger  reward  to 
the  industry  of  its  producer.  He  will  not  merely  receive 
more  money  for  his  yearly  product  than  he  could  have  done 
for  a  long,  indefinite  period  if  Manufactures  had  been  left  to 
grow  up  around  him,  by  the  slow,  capricious  efforts  of 
unaided  individual  enterprise,  exposed  to  the  relentless  hos 
tility  of  their  alarmed  and  skillful,  wealthy  and  powerful  For 
eign  rivals,  but  he  will  receive  afar  greater  aggregrate  of  the 
various  articles  he  desires  in  exchange  for  his  own  surplus 
productions.  The  reason  why  this  is  inevitable  is  that  the 
number  of  actual  producers,  the  amount  of  aggregate  product, 
is  immensely  greater  than  formerly.  Of  a  thousand  workers 
there  were  originally  three  hundred  in  Illinois  producing 
Grain,  twro  hundred  in  Europe  fabricating  various  products  to 
be  exchanged  for  the  Grain,  and  the  remaining  five  hundred 


128  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

employed  as  wagoners,  boatmen,  sailors,  forwarders,  mer 
chants,  etc.,  in  interchanging  the  Provisions  and  the  Manu 
factures  between  their  respective  producers,  and  living  (as 
they  must)  out  of  the  aggregate  product.  Now,  with  the 
workshops  attracted  to  the  westward  of  the  Alleghenies,  there 
are  but  one  hundred  required  to  effect  those  exchanges, 
releasing  four  hundred  from  various  non-productive  functions, 
and  reinforcing  by  so  many  the  body  of  actual  producers  of 
wealth.  The  consequence,  most  manifestly,  is  an  increased 
production  and  accumulation  of  wealth,  to  be  evinced  not  in 
store-houses  filled  to  bursting  with  unneeded  food  and  cloth 
ing,  but  in  the  improvement  of  wild  or  waste  lands,  the  erec 
tion  of  buildings,  and  the  multiplication  of  books,  schools, 
implements,  and  everything  which  conduces  to  human  com 
fort  and  well-being.  There  is  no  mystery,  no  magic,  no 
juggle  in  the  increase  of  National  Wealth  by  an  enlightened 
and  judicious  Protection  of  Home  Industry  —  an  increase 
of  the  wealth  not  of  one  nation  merely,  but  of  the  People  of 
all  Nations.  It  operates  by  giving  Idleness  employment,  and 
rendering  Labor  more  effective.  There  is  nothing  narrow, 
partial,  envious,  exclusive,  in  the  policy  of  Protection,  rightly 
understood  and  rightly  pursued.  That  we  should  systemati 
cally  produce  for  ourselves  and  not  purchase  from  other  coun 
tries  whatever  articles  may  with  substantially  as  little  labor  be 
produced  here  as  elsewhere,  is  the  dictate  not  only  of  a  wise 
Patriotism  but  of  a  generous  Philanthropy.  It  is  the  perma 
nent,  universal  interest  of  the  Toiling  Millions  of  all  climes 
that  the  exchanges  of  their  productions  be  rendered  as  direct, 
simple,  uriexpensive,  as  possible ;  but  a  bloated  and  super- 
flous  Commerce,  regarding  simply  its  own  profits  and  not  the 
general  good,  may,  in  the  absence  of  Protective  Legislation, 
defeat  this  consummation,  or  at  least  postpone  it  for  years. 
We  may  clearly  be  able  —  we  are  able — with  our  Home 
Market  secured  to  us  by  such  legislation,  after  vanquishing 
the  difficulties  presented  by  utter  inexperience,  to  fabricate 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  129 

our  own  Hardware  and  Glass,  our  Pins  and  Penknives,  much 
cheaper  than  we  could  purchase  them  from  England  —  no 
matter  though  they  were  made  somewhat  lower  there — and 
yet  we  should  not  be  able  in  fifty  years  to  naturalize  and  estab 
lish,  under  the  batteries  of  destructive  Foreign  rivalry,  so  as 
to  be  beyond  the  reach  of  its  capricious  competition,  the 
various  arts  and  processes  required  for  their  production.  A 
hundred  farmers  of  Illinois,  combining  or  resolving  singly  to 
purchase  only  Home  Manufactures,  might  not  raise  the  market 
price  of  their  Agricultural  staples  one  per  cent,  though  the 
agreement  of  the  Community,  expressed  through  a  Protective 
Tariff,  to  consume  only  or  mainly  Domestic  fabrics,  securing 
the  Home  Production  of  those  fabrics  and  the  consequent 
Home  Consumption  of  the  Agricultural  staples,  would  inevita 
bly  raise  the  price  of  the  latter  by  fifty  to  a  hundred  per  cent. 
To  repeat,  then,  the  parrot  phrase  that  '  Trade  will  regulate 
itself,'  meaning  that  individual  avarice  and  anarchical  competi 
tion  will  work  out  the  most  beneficent  general  results,  is  a 
futility  unworthy  of  this  enlightened  age.  As  well  leave  a 
necessary  canal  to  dig  itself,  or  be  scraped  out  from  time  to 
time  by  the  voluntary  efforts  of  those  who  chance  to  live  on 
its  borders.  The  seeming  personal  interest  of  many  of  them 
will  often  be  directly  adverse  to  its  construction  at  all,  im 
pelling  them  to  impede  rather  than  advance  it.  General 
good  is  only  to  be  attained  through  general  effort  —  sys 
tematic,  harmonious  and  far-sighted.  Left  to  the  mercy  of 
individual  selfishness  and  caprice,  it  will  rarely  be  com 
passed  at  all. 

But  I  do  not  merely  challenge  the  Economical  soundness 
of  the  Free  Trade  system  —  my  objection  is  deeper,  broader, 
and  more  vital.  I  object  that  it  fails  to  recognize  and  respect 
the  more  important  use  and  purpose  of  Industrial  effort.  I 
object  that  it  regards  Labor  only  as  a  necessary  means  of 
supplying  Man's  sensual  wants,  and  not  at  all  as  Divinely 
appointed  for  the  discipline  and  development  of  our  Race. 


130  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

It  regards  the  Corn  and  the  Cloth  as  the  only  results  of 
Industry ;  and  takes  no  account  of  that  nobler  product, 
the  Man. 

It  everywhere  assumes  as  unquestionable  that  if  our  Peo 
ple,  or  those  of  any  section,  as  a  mass,  a  community,  can 
realize  a  greater  aggregate  of  wealth  by  devoting  their  ener 
gies  wholly  to  some  single  function  or  department  of  Industry 

—  the  growing  of  Cotton,  for  example — then  it  would  be 
clearly  their  interest  and  duty  to  do  nothing  but  grow  Cotton, 
and  with  this  purchase  everything  else  they  need  or  desire, 
made  ready  for  use  abroad.     But  this  I  most  strenuously 
deny.     We  might  so  have  more  goods  for  a  season,  but  less 
good  —  more  sensual  gratification,  but  less  intellectual  expan 
sion  and  force.     A  new  art,  a  new  calling,  introduced  among 
a  people,  is   a  new  seminary  for  that  people.     It  awakens 
inquiry,  elicits  ideas,  suggests  improvements  even  in  old  pro 
cesses  and  inveterate  habits.     It  has  a  decided  value,  though 
not  precisely  calculable  in  dollars  and  cents.     The  boorish- 
ness  of  manners,  the  vacuity  or  stupor  of  mind,  of  a  youth 
trained  in  the  dull  routine  of  a  single  pursuit  and  ignorant  of 
the  processes  of  all  others,  contrasts  strikingly  with  the  rapid 
ity  of  thought,  freedom  of  manner,  and  fertility  of  resource, 
of  his  fellow  who  has  been  reared  in  observing  contact  with 
the  multiform  processes  of  a  hundred  surrounding  avocations. 
It  is   thus  that  the   city  lad  usually  appears  to  advantage 
beside  the  rustic  who  has  grown  up  in  some  secluded  valley, 
even  when  the  latter  is  the  more  favored  by  nature  and  more 
informed  by  the  study  of  the  schools.     The  vast  domain  of 
Industry  is  and  must  be  the  University  of  the  great  majority 

—  it  is  of  the  highest  public  importance  that  none  shall  be 
restricted  therein  to  a  single  acquirement,  but  that  the  educa 
tion  it  affords  shall  be  diversified  and  thorough. 

But  it  is  not  merely  true  that  the  ultimate  uses  and  full 
beneficence  of  the  Divine  appointment  of  Labor  as  the  proper 
condition  and  essential  element  of  human  development  and 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.          131 

well-being  can  only  be  realized  where  that  Labor  is  diversified 
and  elevated,  not  monotonous  and  degraded  —  it  is  also  true 
that,  though  the  majority  might  possibly  find  a  pecuniary  and 
sensible  advantage  in  a  National  Industry  restricted  to  one  or 
two  pursuits,  there  would  be  numerous  classes  condemned  to 
helplessness  and  dependence  thereby.  Let  a  whole  commu 
nity  be  purely  Agriculturists,  purely  Iron-workers,  or  entirely 
devoted  to  any  branch  of  Industry,  and  there  must  be  a  large 
proportion  of  its  members  who,  from  inadequacy  of  strength 
or  of  skill,  from  considerations  of  age  or  of  sex,  will  be  un- 
suited  for  efficien-y  in  that  especial  field  of  effort — conse 
quently,  for  the  most  part  idle  or  but  partially  employed  and 
rneagerly  rewarded.  There  will  be  seasons  when,  owing  to 
unfavorable  markets,  the  icliolc  Industry  of  such  a  community 
will  be  suspended  or  unrecompensed,  as  well  as  classes  which 
habitually  earn  little  or  nothing.  Under  such  circumstances, 
the  laborer  becomes  the  thrall  of  the  capitalist,  just  as  the 
Egyptians  did  of  Pharaoh  during  the  seven  years  of  famine; 
while  those  whose  capacities  are  not  suited  to  the  demands  of 
the  branches  of  industry  there  mainly  pursued,  are  habitually, 
inevitably  dependent  on  others  for  the  means  of  subsistence. 
A  new  branch  of  Industry  naturalized  in  any  country  is  a  vir 
tual  Declaration  of  Independence  for  a  portion  of  its  before 
subject  people.  There  can  be  no  emancipation  of  the  Labor 
ing  Mass  from  a  virtual  bondage  without  a  liberal  and  thor 
ough  diversification  of  Industrial  pursuits  ;  and,  though  this 
is  profitable  in  every  way,  it  is  too  vastly  important  to  be 
deferred  to  any  mere  pecuniary  consideration.  If  it  were 
true  that  it  must  cost  us  more,  according  to  the  narrowest 
dollar-and-cent  reckoning,  to  manufacture  for  ourselves 
than  to  buy  of  others  the  products  of  manufacture,  the 
interests  of  Labor  and  of  Man  would  still  imperatively 
require  us  to  secure  the  supplying  of  our  own  wants,  so  far 
as  Nature  interposed  no  obstacle,  by  the  skill  and  effort  of 
our  own  People.  Not  individual  Man  only,  but  the  Nation 


132  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

as  an  aggregate,  demands  that  symmetric  and  thorough 
Development  which  is  to  be  attained  only  through  a  many- 
sided  Industry. 

You  will  bear  with  one  more  illustration  of  the  blindness 
which  has  befallen  Learning  through  its  divorce  from  Labor. 
I  allude  now  to  the  discussions  which  have  arisen  in  our  day 
respecting  the  organic  Reform  of  Society.  We  of  the  Move 
ment  are  not  surprised  to  hear  from  the  lips  of  Ignorance  and 
a  purblind  Selfishness  the  cavils  which  befit  and  bespeak  their 
sources.  We  are  not  surprised  nor  vexed  to  hear  from  such 
that  Industrial  Association  is  but  another  device  to  get  the 
goods  of  the  thrifty  and  prudent  within  the  grasp  of  the 
knavish  and  prodigal — that  no  house  was  ever  large  enough 
for  two  families — that  no  man  will  work  unless  impelled  to 
it  by  appetite  or  avarice  —  or  any  of  the  sage  and  well-con 
sidered  objections  which  we  are  required  to  meet  as  profound 
novelties  or  novel  profundities,  day  after  day.  From  the 
class  wherein  such  objections  properly  originate,  we  receive 
and  answer  them  with  indomitable  patience.  Neither  are  we 
surprised  that  a  well-meaning  man,  with  a  brain  by  nature  and 
habit  nicely  adjusted  to  the  reception  and  retention  of  one 
idea  at  a  time,  is  afraid  that  if  he  accepts  the  thought  of  a 
Social  condition  based  on  brotherhood  and  love,  he  must 
eject  his  Religion,  or  his  Family  ties,  or  some  other  cherished 
possession,  to  make  room  for  it.  We  see  that  the  man  wants 
expansion  —  he  must  have  more  room  before  he  can  render 
more  hospitality  —  and  we  are  but  moved  to  more  energetic 
and  untiring  effort  in  the  great  work  of  whose  necessity  he 
is  so  striking  an  evidence.  But  when  the  objections  of  the 
ostler  and  the  nurse  confront  us  from  the  rostrum  and  the 
pulpit — when  they  overwhelm  us  in  the  magisterial  dictum 
of  the  Professor  —  when  the  annihilation  that  we  can  not 
realize  in  the  Judge's  argument  overtakes  us  in  the  Judge's 
frown — what  shall  we  think  or  say?  The  narrowness  and 
obliquity  of  the  depressed  and  benighted  was  saddening  ; 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  133 

but  when  that  which  should  be  light  but  deepens  darkness, 
whither  shall  we  turn  for  a  ray  ?  Whither  but  to  the  great 
central  truth  of  which  we  are  the  imperfect  advocates '? 

We  of  the  Movement  maintain  a  position  which  need  not 
be  deemed  ambiguous  and  ought  not  to  be  regarded  with 
distrust  or  aversion  by  any  generous,  lofty  mind  —  by  any 
hopeful,  loving  heart.  We  maintain  that  Industry,  now  too 
often  degraded  and  repugnant,  may  be  everywhere  elevated 
and  rendered  attractive,  so  that  not  the  result  only  but  the 
process  shall  be  a  source  of  daily  joy.  We  contend  that 
the  anarchy  between  Labor  and  Capital  which  now  glaringly 
prevails  all  around  us  may  be  replaced  by  a  better  system, 
wherein  a  just  and  settled  proportion  of  product  shall  be 
accorded  to  each,  and  the  present  alienating,  disorganizing, 
depraving,  universal  struggle  to  secure  more  wages  for  less 
work  or  more  work  for  less  wages,  shall  be  banished  forever, 
taking  unfaithfulness  on  the  one  side  and  extortion  on  the 
other  along  with  it.  We  maintain  that,  in  this  bounteous 
creation  of  our  God,  a  man  standing  idle  for  want  of  em 
ployment,  or  even  of  suitable  employment,  when  there  is 
scarcely  a  square  mile  of  the  earth's  surface  which  would 
not  reward  ten  times  the  labor  ever  yet  bestowed  on  it,  is  a 
grievous  wrong  and  a  bitter  reproach  to  our  whole  Social 
Economy,  wherein  the  cunning  and  the  strong  secure  a  cer 
tain  portion  of  comfort  and  luxury  to  themselves  by  means 
which  leave  the  simple  and  the  feeble  to  famish.  We  con 
tend  that  the  Rights  of  Property  in  the  earth,  so  wisely  and 
necessarily  guarantied  to  the  fortunate  possessors,  were 
granted  not  that  the  many  might  be  excluded  from  the  com 
mon  source  of  sustenance,  but  that  they  might  be  enabled 
more  securely,  peacefully,  advantageously  to  derive  their 
subsistence  therefrom,  and  that  the  Right  to  Labor,  and  to 
receive  the  rewards  of  Labor,  pertains  to  every  individual 
where  the  right  to  the  Soil,  originally  free  and  common  to 
all,  has  been  granted  away  to  a  part.  We  maintain  that,  as 
12 


134  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

no  man.  clearly,  would  have  a  moral  right  to  acquire  the 
ownership  of  all  the  earth  and,  forbidding  any  to  cultivate  or 
dwell  on  it,  starve  the  Race  to  death,  so  no  one  can  have  the 
moral  right  to  do  this  in  part,  by  monopolizing  the  land  and 
keeping  it  unproductive  for  the  gratification  of  his  pomp  and 
avarice,  while  hundreds  around  him  are  suffering  for  the  want 
of  it.  In  fine,  we  hold  that  all  individual  rights  are  held  sub 
ordinate  to  the  demands  of  Universal  Beneficence,  and  though 
Human  Law  may  not  prescribe  the  limits  of  such  rights  and 
provide  against  any  overstepping  them,  yet  the  Divine  Law 
condemns  every  act  which  finds  its  end  in  self-gratification  by 
means  which  trench  on  the  well-being  of  others.  We  main 
tain  that  the  isolated  family  is  not  the  most  perfect  form  of 
the  household  —  that  immense  economies,  in  both  production 
and  consumption,  are  attainable  by  Combined  Effort,  directed 
by  combined  experience  and  wisdom  —  that  a  true  and  full 
Education,  such  as  is  not  possible  under  the  isolated  system, 
will  be  all  but  inevitable  in  the  Combined  Order,  with  its 
schools  beneath  the  common  roof  for  every  department  of 
Knowledge  and  Art,  presided  over  by  instructors  chosen  from 
the  whole  body  because  of  their  observed  and  tested  capacity 
to  teach,  and  not  of  their  indisposition  to  work  —  but,  above 
all,  its  extensive,  infinitely  diversified,  carefully  perfected  pro 
cesses  of  Industry  in  action  all  around  the  young  learner. 
We  maintain  that  only  in  such  a  relation,  based  on  a  pro 
found  sentiment  of  Human  Brotherhood,  can  be  wrought  out 
the  emancipation  of  the  Laboring  Class  from  practical  servi 
tude  and  the  haunting  dread  of  destitution — from  Ignorance, 
Degradation  and  the  apathy  of  departed  Hope.  We  main 
tain  that  for  Woman,  from  infancy  a  toy  or  a  slave,  so  often 
condemned  to  mercenary  and  loathed  marriages,  or  a  useless 
and  joyless  loneliness,  by  an  education  and  by  Social  usages 
which  deny  her  the  means  of  essential  independence,  there  is 
no  hope  but  in  a  true  Social  condition,  and  enlarged  oppor 
tunities  for  Knowledge,  liberal  Culture  and  Industrial  useful- 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  135 

ness  which  the  Phalanx  alone  can  afford  to  all.  We  maintain 
that  only  in  a  Society  which  puts  an  end  to  the  interminable 
vagrancy  of  Labor  anxiously  seeking  employment,  and  often 
seeking  long  and  hungrily  in  vain  —  which  banishes  Commerce 
and  Wages,  with  their  incessant  temptations  to  selfishness, 
avarice  and  dishonesty  —  which  secures  Development  and 
Opportunity  to  all,  with  Plenty  and  Comfort  to  every  one  who 
will  use  the  means  he  possesses  of  acquiring  them — wherein 
Love  to  God  and  Man  will  constitute  the  moral  atmosphere, 
and  Progress  in  all  good  the  universal  aspiration  —  can  the 
benign  purposes  of  Heaven  be  fulfilled  and  the  Destiny  of 
Man  on  earth  accomplished. 

If  there  be  any  who  object  that  the  Social  Movement  of  our 
time  is  defective  in  method  or  in  purpose,  we  simply  invite 
them  to  embrace  and  pursue  it  by  that  better  method,  with 
that  better  purpose,  which  their  criticism  implies.  If  there 
be  any  who  object  that  only  publicans  and  sinners  are  en 
gaged  in  it,  we  ask  them  to  dignify  it  with  their  weight  of 
character  and  hallow  it  with  their  sanctity.  If  they  deem  its 
advocates  heretical  in  faith  or  deficient  in  piety,  how  much 
larger  and  more  inviting  is  the  field  wherein  they  are  called 
to  exemplify  the  influences  of  a  true  faith  and  of  a  saintly 
life  !  Assuredly,  there  is  no  necessary  heresy  nor  impiety  in 
effort  to  supplant  Divergence  by  Convergence  of  Interests  — 
to  replace  envious  Competition  by  generous  Cooperation  — 
to  banish  Strife  and  Want,  and  establish  instead  Concord  and 
Plenty  ;  and  if  any  has  been  engrafted  thereon  by  injudi 
cious  or  inconsiderate  partisans,  it  will  be  easy  to  demonstrate 
the  fact  by  an  effort  based  on  better  principles,  and  made  in 
a  more  catholic  spirit.  We  may  be  sure  that  every  sincere, 
unselfish  effort  to  do  good  is  based  on  a  Religion  which  can 
not  be  false,  and  a  Faith  which  takes  hold  on  Heaven. 

Now  it  weighs  little  with  us  that  those  who  never  thought 
seriously,  candidly,  of  this  subject  for  two  hours,  perceive 
obstacles  in  our  path  which  to  them  seem  insurmountable  — 


136  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

for  we  have  traversed  the  quagmires  in  which  they  now 
flounder  and  know  that  they  are  not  impassable.  It  is  no 
tidings  to  us  that  time,  and  effort,  and  sacrifice,  will  be  re 
quisite  to  secure  what  we  contemplate,  and  that  the  grave  will 
probably  close  over  the  present  generation  before  half  that  we 
foresee  and  struggle  for  can  be  attained.  Neither  can  failure 
in  practical  trials  discourage  us,  for  we  anticipate  successive 
and  often  mortifying  failures.  The  inadequacy  of  means,  the 
absence  of  that  every-day  wisdom  learned  only  in  the  school 
of  experience,  the  imperfection  of  men,  all  unite  to  assure  us 
on  this  point.  But  we  are  sustained  by  an  undoubting  faith 
that  whatever  of  possible  good  has  been  revealed  to  the  un 
derstandings  of  men  may  be  rendered  practical  by  devoted 
and  patient  exertion.  Through  sacrifices,  discouragements, 
reverses,  and  failures,  the  great  work  steadily  advances  step 
by  step  to  its  ultimate  triumph.  A  hundred  failures  will  not 
suffice  to  arrest  it ;  a  thousand  lives  are  already  pledged  to  its 
steadfast  prosecution ;  and  many  thousands  will  be  ready  ere 
these  are  wholly  spent.  This  wounded,  bleeding  body  of 
Humanity  shall  yet  be  raised  up  and  healed  —  the  benefi 
cence  of  God  has  decreed  it ;  the  silent  transformations  of  the 
ages  have  prepared  the  way  for  it.  For  a  time  may  the 
Priest  and  the  Levite  distrustfully  pass  by  on  the  other  side ; 
but  they  shall  yet  recognize  in  this  the  work  which  they  were 
appointed  to  aid  and  to  compass,  and  shall  exultingly  share 
in  the  glory  and  the  joy  of  its  consummation  ! 

I  have  thus  far  invited  your  attention  to  some  of  the  de 
fects,  as  they  strike  me,  of  our  Educational  methods  and  aims, 
as  exemplified  in  the  practical  errors  and  deficiencies  in  which 
they  result.  I  need  not,  surely,  now  reverse  the  picture  and 
exhibit  at  length  the  amendments  I  would  with  diffidence 
suggest.  That  Education  should  be  based  on  Labor  and 
directed  thoroughly,  discriminately,  to  practical  ends — this 
is  the  immovable  and  universal  foundation.  If  a  youth  is 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.          137 

destined  to  be  a  Professor,  a  Physician,  a  Lawyer,  a  Poet,  a 
Clergyman,  let  his  higher  education  at  every  step  contemplate 
that  fact  ;  but  let  all  his  education,  from  infancy  to  maturity, 
regard  the  development  and  perfection  of  the  Man.  And, 
as  one  battle  contributes  more  than  ten  reviews  or  sham 
engagements  to  form  the  soldier,  so  one  acquirement  which 
commends  itself  to  the  student's  regard  by  a  direct  and  pal 
pable  utility  shall  prove  of  more  worth  to  him  than  a  dozen 
which  he  is  constrained  to  labor  at  as  part  of  a  prescribed 
routine,  and  (as  he  is  told)  to  '  discipline  his  mind.'  It  is 
in  life  only  that  we  learn  how  to  live.  The  great  ends  of  all 
study,  of  all  acquirement,  are  ability  and  disposition  to  dis 
charge  more  effectually  our  duties  as  men  and  as  citizens. 
The  benefits  of  a  true  education  commence  with  the  indi 
vidual,  but  pass  directly  and  inevitably  to  the  community. 
He  who  is  not  a  better  brother,  neighbor,  friend,  and  citizen, 
because  of  his  superior  knowledge,  may  very  well  doubt 
whether  his  knowledge  is  really  superior  to  the  ignorance  of 
the  unlettered  many  around  him.  He  whose  education  has 
not  taught  him  to  shun  Vice  and  loathe  Hypocrisy  —  has  not 
taught  him  to  prize  lightly  the  pleasures  of  Sense,  the  pos 
session  of  boundless  Wealth,  and  the  pomp  of  Public  Station, 
has  been  taught  to  little  purpose,  and  should  be  sent  back  to 
his  hornbook. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  decry  Ambition.  There  is  a  generous 
and  lofty  aspiration  for  the  blessing  of  the  present  and  the 
admiring  regard  of  future  generations,  which  has  doubtless 
been  the  main-spring  of  many  a  self-denying  act  of  devotion 
to  human  welfare  —  of  many  an  illustrious  and  eminently 
useful  career.  Let  this  be  held  in  due  honor,  that  those  who 
do  not  find  in  the  consecration  of  their  every  faculty,  every 
hour,  to  the  good  of  their  Race,  the  proper  and  ample  reward 
of  such  consecration,  may  unite  in  the  good  work,  though 
from  a  motive  less  exalted.  1  can  comprehend  an  ardent 
desire  for  Public  Station  and  even  for  Riches,  springing  from 
12* 


138  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

a  consciousness  of  capacity  to  wield  the  power  thence  accru 
ing  to  the  signal  benefit  of  mankind.  It  is  this  which  excuses 
the  thirst  for  office  we  often  detect  in  men  who  by  nature  are 
clearly  above  receiving  either  consideration  or  renown  from 
any  post  whatever.  Yet  I  trust  this  will  not  much  longer 
continue  —  that  the  increase  and  diffusion  of  Knowledge, 
insuring  a  more  just  and  general  discrimination  of  the  real 
from  the  factitious,  will  gradually  work  a  separation  of  real 
power,  as  well  as  of  popular  homage,  from  Station  undignified 
by  the  Virtue  and  Ability  which  should  be  essential  to  its 
attainment.  Our  Country  has  enjoyed  —  shall  I  say,  has 
enjoyed  ?  —  a  remarkable  example  of  the  impotency  of  mere 
station,  however  lofty,  to  confer  respect  or  substantial  power 
—  may  we  not  hope  that  the  salutary  lesson  will  be  widely 
and  lastingly  heeded  ? 

Yet  I  confess  that  I  find  or  fancy  a  perverted  and  groveling 
Ambition  alarmingly  prevalent  among  our  Educated  Young 
Men,  and  that  the  hope  of  awaking  in  some  minds  a  nobler 
and  loftier  impulse  has  been  instrumental  in  bringing  me  be 
fore  you.  It  seems  to  me  that,  while  our  higher  Culture  is 
far  more  vague  and  indiscriminate  than  I  could  wish  it,  the 
purposes  and  aims  of  those  who  acquire  that  Culture  are  too 
generally  special  and  personal  to  an  extent  equally  faulty  and 
even  more  pernicious.  Nine-tenths  of  our  Educated  Youth 
pass  through  College  to  fit  themselves  for  this  or  that  profess 
ion —  very  rarely  that  they  may  be  simply  better  men.  If 
they  intently  explore  and  unseal  the  fountains  of  Knowledge, 
it  is  not  that  they,  and  all  men  and  the  parched  earth,  may 
be  freely  refreshed  by  the  bubbling  element,  but  that  they 
may  sell  it  by  the  penny's  worth  to  the  thirsty  wayfarer.  I 
am  not  satisfied  with  the  aspect  here  presented.  I  do  not 
object  to  the  adequate  reinforcement  of  the  Professions  from 
the  ranks  of  the  Educated  ;  but  I  demur  to  the  devotion  of 
the  Educated  Class,  of  the  entire  facilities  and  means  of  a 
liberal  Culture,  to  the  filling  of  the  Professions.  It  seems  to 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.     131) 

me,  if  not  a  profanation,  at  least  an  impotent  conclusion, 
when  a  young  man  who  has  spent  some  years  in  intimate  and 
delighted  communion  with  the  Philosophers,  Poets  and  Sages 
of  all  times,  subsides  into  a  mere  dispenser  of  medicines  or 
drawer  of  declarations.  I  would  not  undervalue  the  Pro 
fessions  as  spheres  of  usefulness,  though  I  am  in  small  danger 
indeed  of  overvaluing  them  ;  but  I  insist  that  the  Man  and 
the  Scholar  shall  not  be  swallowed  up  in  the  Lawyer  or  the 
Doctor.  I  insist  that  he  shall  not  consider  the  Profession  the 
object  and  end  of  his  Education,  but  shall  still  employ  the 
latter  to  qualify  him  for  higher  and  more  varied  usefulness 
through  all  the  scenes  of  life.  What  he  has  learned  from 
Plato  and  from  Newton,  from  the  master-minds  of  our  Race, 
let  him,  as  opportunity  shall  offer,  dispense  freely  and  gladly 
to  his  less  favored  neighbors,  till  they  too  shall  recognize 
and  bless  profound  Learning  as  the  guidance  and  the  solace 
of  mankind. 

I  have  come  naturally  to  the  consideration  of  the  position 
of  the  Educated  Class  in  our  existing  Society,  and  the  influ 
ence  they  therein  exert.  Will  any  contend  that  this  is  what 
it  should  and  must  be  ?  Is  our  public  opinion  usually  shaped 
and  directed  by  that  of  the  more  elaborately  Educated '(  I 
think  no  one  will  pretend  it.  There  are  points  wherein,  no 
settled  or  strenuous  opposition  being  offered,  the  sentiment  of 
the  College-bred  class  is  accordant  with  that  of  the  uneduca 
ted  ;  but  let  a  vital  question  arise,  on  which  the  oracles  of  the 
grog-shops  shall  generally  take  ground  against  the  oracles  of 
the  schools,  and  can  we  hesitate  as  to  which  will  triumph  ? 
Were  our  Educated  Class  really  the  leaders  of  Opinion  in  this 
Country,  could  such  atrocities  as  Lynch-Law  and  Repudi 
ation  ever  be  countenanced  ?  There  is  manifestly  unsound- 
ness  here  —  evil  which  needs  to  be  probed  and  cured.  The 
Educated  Class  is  far  less  potential  than  it  should  be ;  the 
mischief  may  be  the  Country's,  but  the  fault  is  primarily  its 
own.  Its  sources  I  have  throughout  been  endeavoring  to 


140  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

detect  and  expose  to  your  apprehension.  It  has  been  said 
by  one  of  the  most  eminent  scholars*  of  our  time  and  country, 
"  It  is  difficult  for  cultivated  Pride  to  put  its  ear  to  the 
ground  and  listen  to  the  teachings  of  a  lowly  Humanity."  I 
see  how  this  may  be  difficult  for  Pride  of  any  sort,  but  I 
deny  that  the  voice  of  Humanity,  however  lowly,  ought  to  be 
less  welcome  or  less  intelligible  to  the  truly  cultivated  than 
to  the  uncultivated  ear  —  far  otherwise.  But  there  is  a  half- 
truth  at  the  bottom  of  this  sentiment,  and  it  bears  to  us  an 
admonition.  There  is  too  little  cordial  sympathy — too  little 
familiar  and  friendly  interchange  of  thought — between  the 
better  educated  and  the  imperfectly  instructed.  There  are 
too  many  barriers  of  form  and  usage  between  them.  Each 
might  learn  much  from  the  other — profit  much  by  a  nearer 
relation.  Each  may  find  admonition  in  the  experiences  of 
the  other,  if  freely  imparted.  In  the  great  convulsions  now 
dimly  apprehended  but  certainly  at  hand,  the  well-meaning 
and  right-thinking  of  each  class  will  find  a  union  essential  to 
both.  That  enlightened  Conservatism,  which  asks  what  it  is 
that  we  should  conserve,  and  what  there  is  of  abuse  or  in 
justice  that  should  be  cut  away  in  order  that  what  is  valuable 
and  precious  may  be  conserved — that  genial  Reform  which 
recognizes  Harmony  and  Love  as  the  elements  of  all  true 
Progress,  and  shrinks  from  any  changes  impelled  by  Hatred 
and  compassed  through  Disorder — are  learning  to  know  each 
other  as  brethren  and  natural  allies.  On  the  altar  of  a 
common  danger,  a  common  interest,  may  their  union  be  in- 
dissolubly  consummated  ! 

I  have  said  that  the  practical  and  treasured  acquirement  of 
the  Educated  Class  seems  to  me  too  special  and  individual, 
while  their  culture  appears  indiscriminate  and  general.  Here 
in  one  of  our  rural  townships  is  a  limited  number  of  persons 
—  perhaps  ten  or  twenty  —  who  have  enjoyed  the  benefits  of 
a  College  education.  Their  literary  acquirement  of  course 

*  Hon.  Geo.  Bancroft — Address  of  Massachusetts  Democratic  Convention. 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  141 

far  surpasses  that  of  the  great  mass  around  them.  But  how 
are  their  neighbors  and  townsmen  permitted  to  realize  this  ? 
Is  it  not  quite  common  that  their  only  experience  of  it  is 
based  on  the  hard  words  in  an  attorney's  prolix  folios  or  an 
apothecary's  account  —  words  subsidiary  to  a  still  harder 
charge  at  the  bottom  of  it  ?  May  we  not  hope  that  this  shall 
be  amended "?  —  that  the  Educated  Class  shall  yet  be  related 
to  the  less  instructed  many  in  a  manner  very  different  from 
this  ?  Why  should  not  this  class  create  an  atmosphere,  not 
merely  of  exemplary  morals  and  refined  manners,  but  of 
palpable  utility  and  blessing  ?  Why  should  not  the  Clergy 
man,  the  Doctor,  the  Lawyer,  of  a  country  town  be  not 
merely  the  patrons  and  commenders  of  every  generous  idea, 
the  teachers  and  dispensers  of  all  that  is  novel  in  Science  or 
noble  in  Philosophy  —  exemplars  of  Integrity,  of  Amenity, 
and  of  an  all-pervading  Humanity  to  those  around  them  — 
but  even  in  a  more  material  sphere  regarded  and  blessed  as 
universal  benefactors  V  Why  should  they  not  be  universally  — 
as  I  rejoice  to  say  that  some  of  them  are  —  models  of  wisdom 
and  thrift  in  Agriculture  —  their  farms  and  gardens  silent  but 
most  effective  preachers  of  the  benefits  of  forecast,  calculation, 
thorough  knowledge  and  faithful  application  ?  Nay,  more  : 
Why  should  not  the  Educated  Class  be  everywhere  teachers, 
through  lectures,  essays,  conversations,  as  well  as  practically, 
of  those  great  and  important  truths  of  Nature,  which  Chem 
istry  and  other  sciences  are  just  revealing  to  bless  the  Indus 
trial  world  ?  Why  should  they  not  unobtrusively  and  freely 
teach  the  Farmer,  the  Mechanic,  the  Worker  in  any  capacity, 
how  best  to  summon  the  blind  forces  of  the  elements  to  his 
aid  and  how  most  effectually  to  render  them  subservient  to 
his  needs?  All  this  is  clearly  within  the  power  of  the  Edu 
cated  Class,  if  truly  educated  ;  all  this  is  clearly  within  the 
sphere  of  duty  appointed  them  by  Providence.  Let  them 
but  do  it,  and  they  will  stand,  where  they  ought  to  stand, 
at  the  head  of  the  community,  the  directors  of  Public 


142  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Opinion   and   the  universally  recognized  benefactors  of  the 
Race. 

I  stand  before  an  audience  in  good  part  of  Educated  men, 
and  I  plead  for  the  essential  independence  of  their  class  — 
not  for  their  sakes  only  or  mainly,  but  for  the  sake  of  Man 
kind.  I  see  clearly,  or  I  am  strangely  bewildered,  a  deep- 
rooted  and  wide-spreading  evil  which  is  palsying  the  influence 
and  paralyzing  the  exertions  of  Intellectual  and  even  Moral 
superiority  all  over  our  Country.  The  lawyer,  so  far  at  least 
as  his  livelihood  is  concerned,  is  too  generally  but  a  lawyer ; 
he  must  live  by  law  or  he  has  no  means  of  living  at  all.  So 
with  the  Doctor ;  so  alas  !  with  the  Pastor.  He,  too,  often 
finds  himself  surrounded  by  a  large,  expensive  family,  few  or 
none  of  whom  have  been  systematically  trained  to  earn  their 
bread  in  the  sweat  of  their  brows,  and  who,  even  if  approach 
ing  maturity  in  life,  lean  on  him  for  a  subsistence.  This  son 
must  be  sent  to  the  academy,  and  that  one  to  College  ;  this 
daughter  to  an  expensive  boarding-school,  and  that  must  have 
a  piano  —  and  all  to  be  defrayed  from  his  salary,  which,  how 
ever  liberal,  is  scarcely  or  barely  adequate  to  meet  the  de 
mands  upon  it.  How  shall  this  man  —  for  man,  after  all,  he 
is  —  with  expenses,  and  cares,  and  debts  pressing  upon  him 
— hope  to  be  at  all  times  faithful  to  the  responsibilities  of  his 
high  calling  !  He  may  speak  ever  so  fluently  and  feelingly 
against  sin  in  the  abstract,  for  that  can  not  give  offence  to  the 
most  fastidiously  sensitive  incumbent  of  the  richly  furnished 
hundred-dollar  pews.  But  will  he  dare  to  rebuke  openly, 
fearlessly,  specially,  the  darling  and  decorous  vices  of  his  most 
opulent  and  liberal  parishioners  —  to  say  to  the  honored  dis 
penser  of  liquid  poison,  "  Your  trade  is  murder,  and  your 
wealth  the  price  of  perdition!"  —  To  him  who  amasses 
wealth  by  stinting  honest  Labor  of  its  reward  and  grinding 
the  faces  of  the  Poor,  "Do  not  mock  God  by  putting  your 
reluctant  dollar  into  the  Missionary  box  —  there  is  no  such 
heathen  in  New  Zealand  as  yourself!"  —  and  so  to  every 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  143 

.specious  hypocrite  around  him,  who  patronizes  the  church  to 
keep  to  windward  of  his  conscience  and  freshen  the  varnish 
on  his  character,  '  Thou  art  the  man  !'  I  tell  you,  friends  ! 
he  will  not,  for  he  can  not  afford  to,  be  thoroughly  faithful  ! 
One  in  a  thousand  may  be,  and  hardly  more.  We  do  not 
half  comprehend  the  profound  significance  of  that  statute  of 
the  old  Church  which  inflexibly  enjoins  celibacy  on  her 
Clergy.  The  very  existence  of  the  Church,  as  a  steadfast 
power  above  the  multitude,  giving  law  to  the  People  and  not 
receiving  its  law  day  by  day  from  them,  depends  on  its  main 
tenance.  And  if  we  are  ever  to  enjoy  a  Christian  Ministry 
which  shall  systematically,  promptly,  fearlessly  war  upon 
every  shape  and  disguise  of  evil — which  shall  fearlessly 
grapple  with  War  and  Slavery,  and  every  loathsome  device 
by  which  man  seeks  to  glut  his  appetites  at  the  expense  of  his 
brother's  well-being,  it  will  be  secured  to  us  through  the  in 
strumentality  of  the  very  Reform  I  advocate  —  a  Reform 
which  shall  render  the  clergyman  independent  of  his  parish 
ioners,  and  enable  him  to  say  manfully  to  all,  "  You  may 
cease  to  pay,  but  I  shall  not  cease  to  preach,  so  long  as  you 
have  sins  to  reprove,  and  I  have  strength  to  reprove  them  ! 
I  live  in  good  part  by  the  labor  of  my  hands,  and  can  do  so 
wholly  whenever  that  shall  become  necessary  to  the  fearless 
discharge  of  my  duty." 

A  single  illustration  more,  and  I  draw  this  long  disserta 
tion  to  a  close.  I  shall  speak  now  more  directly  to  facts 
within  my  own  knowledge,  and  which  have  made  on  me  a 
deep  and  mournful  impression.  I  speak  to  your  experience, 
too,  friends  of  the  Phenix  and  Union  Societies  —  to  your 
future  if  not  to  your  past  experience  —  and  I  entreat  you  to 
heed  me !  Every  year  sends  forth  from  our  Colleges  an 
army  of  brave  youth,  who  have  nearly  or  quite  exhausted 
their  little  means  in  procuring  what  is  termed  an  education, 
and  must  now  find  some  remunerating  employment  to  sus 
tain  them  while  they  are  more  specially  fitting  themselves 


144  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

for  and  inducting  themselves  into  a  Profession.  Some  of 
them  find  and  are  perforce  contented  with  some  meager 
clerkship  ;  but  the  great  body  of  them  turn  their  attention 
at  once  to  Literature  —  to  the  instruction  of  their  juniors  in 
some  school  or  family,  or  to  the  instruction  of  the  world 
through  the  Press.  Hundreds  of  them  hurry  at  once  to  the 
cities  and  the  journals,  seeking  employment  as  essayists  or 
collectors  of  intelligence — bright  visions  of  Fame  in  the 
foreground,  and  the  gaunt  wolf  Famine  hard  at  their  heels. 
Alas  for  them  !  they  do  not  see  that  the  very  circumstances 
under  which  they  seek  admission  to  the  calling  they  have 
chosen  almost  forbid  the  idea  of  their  succeeding  in  it. 

o 

They  do  not  approach  the  public  with  thoughts  struggling 
for  utterance,  but  with  stomachs  craving  bread.  They  seek 
the  Press,  not  that  they  may  proclaim  through  it  what  it  would 
cost  their  lives  to  repress,  but  that  they  may  preserve  their 
souls  to  their  bodies,  at  some  rate.  Do  you  not  see  under 
what  immense  disadvantages  one  of  this  band  enters  upon 
his  selected  vocation,  if  he  has  the  rare  fortune  to  find  or 
make  a  place  in  it?  He  is  surrounded,  elbowed  on  every 
side  by  anxious  hundreds,  eager  to  obtain  employment  on 
any  terms ;  he  must  write  not  what  he  feels,  but  what  another 
needs ;  must  '  regret'  or  '  rejoice'  to  order,  working  for  the 
day,  and  not  venturing  to  utter  a  thought  which  the  day 
does  not  readily  approve.  And  can  you  fancy  that  is  the 
foundation  o^  which  to  build  a  lofty  and  durable  renown  — 
a  brave  and  laudable  success  of  any  kind?  I  tell  you,  no, 
young  friends! — the  farthest  from  it  possible.  There  is 
scarcely  any  position  more  perilous  to  generous  impulses 
and  lofty  aims  —  scarcely  any  which  more  imminently  threat 
ens  to  sink  the  Man  in  the  mere  schemer  and  striver  for 
subsistence  and  selfish  gratification.  I  say,  then,  in  deep 
earnestness,  to  every  youth  who  hopes  or  desires  to  become 
useful  to  his  Race  or  in  any  degree  eminent  through  Litera 
ture,  Seek  first  of  all  things  a  position  of  pecuniary  inde- 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.  115 

pendence  ;  learn  to  live  by  the  labor  of  your  hands,  the 
sweat  of  your  face,  as  a  necessary  step  toward  the  career 
you  contemplate.  If  you  can  earn  but  three  shillings  a  day 
by  rugged  yet  moderate  toil,  learn  to  live  contentedly  on 
two  shillings,  and  so  preserve  your  mental  faculties  fresh  and 
unworn  to  read,  to  observe,  to  think,  thus  preparing  your 
self  for  the  ultimate  path  you  have  chosen.  At  length, 
when  a  mind  crowded  with  discovered  or  elaborated  truths 
will  have  utterance,  begin  to  write  sparingly  and  tersely  for 
the  nearest  suitable  periodical  —  no  matter  how  humble  and 
obscure  —  if  the  thought  is  in  you,  it  will  find  its  way  to 
those  who  need  it.  Seek  not  compensation  for  this  utter 
ance  until  compensation  shall  seek  you  ;  then  accept  it  if  an 
object,  and  not  involving  too  great  sacrifices  of  independence 
and  disregard  of  more  immediate  duties.  In  this  way  alone 
can  something  like  the  proper  dignity  of  the  Literary  Char 
acter  be  restored  and  maintained.  But  while  every  man 
who  either  is  or  believes  himself  capable  of  enlightening 
others,  appears  only  anxious  to  sell  his  faculty  at  the  earliest 
moment  and  for  the  largest  price,  I  can  not  hope  that  the 
Public  will  be  induced  to  regard  very  profoundly  either  the 
lesson  or  the  teacher. 

Graduates,  Students  of  Hamilton  College  !  a  parting  word 
with  you  !  Some  of  you  have  completed  your  studies  and 
are  now  passing  out  into  the  actual  world,  to  be  followed  in 
successive  years  by  your  brethren  whom  you  now  leave  be 
hind  you.  I  wrill  not  doubt  that  you  bid  adieu  to  these 
scenes  with  lofty  purposes  of  usefulness  —  with  a  proper 
appreciation  of  the  advantages  over  the  great  mass  of  your 
countrymen  which  have  been  here  afforded  you,  and  of  tlio 
obligations  which  these  advantages  draw  after  them.  1  am 
not  so  far  removed  from  youth  as  to  have  forgotten  all  its  san 
guine  visions  and  generous  aspirations.  I  bid  you  cherish 
them  each  and  all,  for  they  are  wiser  than  the  cold  les- 
son  which  disappointment  and  experienced  treachery  may 
13 


116  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

afterward  teach  you.  O  be  assured,  above  all  things,  that  no 
generous  and  self-forgetting  aspiration  can  ever  be  unwise 
or  mistaken  while  the  Universe  obeys  a  scepter  and  Earth 
revolves  beneath  the  eye  of  a  benignant  Father!  I  know 
not  whether  I  may  hope  in  this  hurried  communion  to  have 
implanted  in  one  breast  a  clearer  or  nobler  idea  of  the  true 
purposes  and  aims  of  Life  —  I  may  not  confidently  trust 
that  I  have  imparted  to  one  mind  a  deeper  disdain  of  those 
bubbles  surnamed  Luxury,  Ease,  Wealth,  Power,  Popu 
larity,  Honors,  by  which  many  an  ardent  and  capacious  soul 
has  been  deluded  to  its  ruin.  But  you  are  by  position 
Scholars,  and  by  virtue  of  that  position  you  musl  realize  — 
at  least,  in  your  calmer  and  better  moments,  when  that  which 
is  immortal  is  not  stifled  within  you — that  a  true  Life  is  the 
one  thing  desirable  to  Man  on  earth,  for  and  in  itself — that 
Virtue,  being  truly  such,  transcends  all  idea  of  reward,  and 
becomes  to  the  spiritual  what  gravitation  is  to  the  material 
world — a  law  which  will  not  be  evaded.  He  who  truly, 
fully  apprehends  the  one  fact  that  GOD  REIGNS,  knows  all 
that  can  be  of  morality  —  knows  that  no  conceivable  diver 
gence  from  the  line  of  strictest  rectitude,  of  loftiest  endeavor, 
can  possibly  be  otherwise  than  calamitous  in  and  of  itself, 
wholly  apart  from  all  extraneous  conditions  and  conse 
quences.  I  shall  not,  then,  exhort  you  to  follow  Purity  and 
Righteousness,  since  the  admonition  would  imply  a  possible 
ignorance  on  .your  part  of  the  existence  of  the  All- Wise  — 
of  the  laws  of  your  own  being.  But  I  may  warn  you, 
friends !  of  the  mistake  so  commonly  made  by  our  educated 
youth  of  lingering  long  by  the  wayside  of  active  life,  under 
the  pretence  —  very  often  alleged  in  good  faith  —  of  a  want 
of  opportunity.  O,  deceive  not  yourselves  thus,  young 
men  !  To  the  rightly  constituted  mind,  to  the  truly  devel 
oped  Man,  there  always  is,  there  always  must  be  opportu 
nity —  opportunity  to  be  and  to  learn,  nobly  to  do  and  to 
endure  —  and  what  matter  whether  with  pomp,  and  eclat, 


THE  RELATIONS  OF  LEARNING  TO  LABOR.     147 

with  sound  of  trumpets  and  shout  of  applauding  thousands, 
or  in  silence  and  seclusion,  beneath  the  calm,  discerning 
gaze  of  Heaven  ?  O  realize  that  no  station  can  be  humble 
on  which  that  gaze  is  approvingly  bent  — 


be.  ignoble  which  is  performed  uprightly  and  not  impelled 
by  sordid  aaid  selfish  aims.  It  is  a  vital  defect  of  our  Society 
and  our  Culture,  which  you  are  bound  to  wrestle  against 
and  to  overcome,  that  while  an  immensity  of  effort  is  ever 
needed,  of  true  work  remains  undone,  we  are  too  generally 
dissatisfied  with  that  which  lies  broad  and  plain  before  us, 
and  waste  our  hours  in  seeking  long  and  far  for  something 
loftier  and  nobler.  We  wander  to  the  Poles  and  the  An 
tipodes,  vainly  seeking  for  that  which  to  the  man  at  peace 
with  himself  is  everywhere,  to  the  unquiet  nowhere.  Vainly 
sighing  for  the  opportunity  of  some  other,  which  his  genius 
and  ready  acceptance  have  made  the  basis  of  an  illustrious 
and  dazzling  career,  we  neglect  and  sacrifice  our  own.  We 
speak  regretfully  of  the  age  of  Chivalry,  the  age  of  Hero 
ism  or  of  perilous  and  doubtful  struggle  for  Freedom,  as  if 
we  did  not  recognize  that  Man's  struggle  with  darkness  and 
evil  is  ever  in  progress,  and  that  to  render  any  age  one  of 
heroism  nothing  is  wanting  but  heroic  souls.  Waiting  for 
the  dead  Past  to  be  acted  over  again  for  our  selfish  gratifi 
cation  and  aggrandizement,  we  suffer  the  precious  and  living 
Present  to  glide  away  from  us  undervalued  and  unimproved. 
Says  a  deep,  fearless  thinker*  of  our  time,  "  To-Day  is  a 
king  in  disguise.  To-Day  always  looks  common  and  trivial, 
in  the  face  of  a  uniform  experience  that  all  great  and  happy 
actions  have  been  made  up  of  these  same  blank  To-Days. 
Let  us  unmask  the  king  as  he  passes."  Yes,  my  young 
friends,  here  is  our  high  privilege  and  our  imperative  du 
ty  —  to  discern  arid  honor  the  disguised  angels  whom  God 
is  ever  sending  to  illumine  and  bless  his  earth.  Not  from 

*  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  —  Lecture  on  'the  Times.' 


148  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

among  the  children  of  monarchs,  ushered  into  being  with 
boom  of  cannon  and  shouts  of  reveling  millions,  but  from 
amid  the  sons  of  obscurity  and  toil,  cradled  in  peril  and 
ignominy — from  the  bulrushes  and  the  manger  come  forth 
the  benefactors  and  saviors  of  Mankind.  So  when  all  the 
babble  and  glare  of  our  age  shall  have  passed  into  a  fitting 
oblivion — when  those  who  have  enjoyed  rare  opportuni 
ties  and  swayed  vast  empires,  and  been  borne  through  life 
on  the  shoulders  of  shouting  multitudes,  shall  have  been  laid 
at  last  to  rest  in  golden  coffins,  to  molder  forgotten,  the 
stately  marble  their  only  monuments,  it  will  be  found  that 
some  humble  youth,  who  neither  inherited  nor  found  but 
hewed  out  his  opportunities,  has  uttered  the  thought  which 
shall  render  the  age  memorable  by  extending  the  means  of 
enlightenment  and  blessing  to  our  Race.  The  great  strug 
gle  for  Human  Progress  and  Elevation  proceeds  noiselessly, 
often  unnoted,  often  checked  and  apparently  baffled,  amid 
the  clamorous  and  debasing  strifes  impelled  by  greedy  self 
ishness  and  low  ambition.  In  that  struggle,  maintained  by 
the  wise  and  good  of  all  parties,  all  creeds,  all  climes,  I  call 
you  to  bear  the  part  of  men.  Heed  the  lofty  summons,  not 
the  feeble  messenger,  and,  with  souls  serene  and  constant, 
prepare  to  tread  boldly  in  the  path  of  highest  duty.  So 
shall  Life  be  to  you  truly  exalted  and  heroic  ;  so  shall  Death 
be  a  transition  neither  sought  nor  dreaded ;  so  shall  your 
memory,  though  cherished  at  first  but  by  a  few  humble,  lov 
ing  hearts,  linger  long  and  gratefully  in  human  remembrance, 
a  watchword  to  the  truthful  and  an  incitement  to  generous 
endeavor,  freshened  by  the  proud  tears  of  admiring  affec 
tion,  and  fragrant  with  the  odors  of  Heaven ! 


HUMAN  LIFE,  119 


V. 

HUMAN    LIFE: 

A      LECTURE. 

To  the  piercing  gaze  of  an  unfettered  spirit,  unmindful 
of  space,  which  should  scan  it  from  the  central  orb  of  our 
system,  this  fair  globe  must  afford  a  spectacle  of  strange 
magnificence  and  beauty.  Rolling  on,  ever  on,  in  her  ap 
pointed  round,  the  earth  must  present  new  scenes  of  interest 
and  grandeur  with  every  hour  of  her  revolving  progress  : 
now  the  swarming  vales  of  China  and  Japan,  the  sultry 
plains  of  India,  with  its  tiger-haunted  jungles,  relieved  by 
the  gaunt,  bleak  piles  of  the  Himmalehs,  piercing  the  very 
skies  with  their  pinnacles  of  eternal  rock  and  ice  ;  then  ap 
pear  the  more  alluring  and  variegated  glades  of  Southern 
and  Middle  Europe,  and  with  them  the  scorched  and  glow 
ing  deserts  of  Africa,  shining  in  silvery  worthlessness  and 
arid  desolation.  The  broad  green  belt  of  the  billowy  Atlan 
tic  now  unfolds  itself,  and  then  appears  the  deeper  green  of 
this  immense,  luxuriant  forest,  America,  witli  the  achieve 
ments  of  three  centuries  of  advancing,  struggling  civilization, 
barely  sufficing  to  dot  irregularly  its  eastern  border,  and 
hardly  equaling  in  extent  those  prairie  openings  in  its  center 
which  Nature,  or  rather  the  Red  Man's  annual  conflagration, 
lias  sufficed  through  many  ages  to  hollow  out  by  impercep 
tible  gradations.  From  amid  the  all-embracing  foliage,  shine 
forth  with  steady  radiance,  with  ^ieep  serenity,  the  mirror- 
13* 


150  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

like  surfaces  of  the  Great  Lakes  —  the  last  surpassing  in 
size,  profundity,  and  beauty — the  slender  threads  of  the  Fa 
ther  of  Waters  and  his  far-stretching  tributaries  are  seen 
disparting  vales  whose  exuberant  fertility  has  known  no 
parallel  since  Eden  ;  while  farther  on,  the  tremendous  chains 
of  the  Andes,  the  Rocky  Mountains,  heave  up  their  scathed 
and  rugged  sides  through  the  surrounding  seas  of  verdure, 
as  if  in  grim  and  haughty  defiance  to  the  utmost  fury  of  the 
lightning  and  the  hurricane,  or  in  scornful  exultation  over 
the  crouching  world  at  their  feet.  Soon  the  broad,  placid 
surface  of  the  vast,  unvexed  Pacific  presents  itself,  sprinkled 
with  isles  of  deepest  emerald  where  flowers  perennial  bloom. 
And  still  the  earth  rolls  on,  and  every  hour  shall  bring  to 
view  fresh  marvels  to  awaken  the  soul  to  a  consciousness  of 
the  Infinite,  to  deepen  the  fervor  of  piety,  and  exalt  the  glory 
of  the  Great  Supreme. 

Yet,  beyond  doubt,  the  central  figure  of  this  vast  wonder 
work  of  creation,  around  which  all  other  entities  and  seem- 
ings  cluster  and  revolve,  is  MAN.  He  is  the  presiding  genius 
—  the  lord  of  the  heritage.  It  is  his  presence  which  gives 
significance  and  interest  to  the  landscape,  which  elevates 
fertility  and  beauty  above  barrenness  and  decay.  Not  in 
laughing  meads  nor  rippling  streamlets,  not  in  broad  blue 
lakes  nor  foaming  cataracts  —  not  even  in  these  vast,  eternal 
forests,  with  their  cavernous  depths,  their  waving,  swelling 
expanse  of  surface,  their  changing  garniture,  so  green,  and 
now  so  golden  —  not  in  these  —  in  any  or  all  of  them  —  does 
the  soul  of  Nature  find  utterance.  On  no  wild  mountain-crag 
or  lone  savannah  would  the  spirit-gaze  dwell  with  clinging 
earnestness.  But  on  the  scenes  of  Man's  earliest,  sternest, 
most  momentous  conflicts  with  nature,  with  destiny,  or  with 
his  own  blinding,  blasting  evil  passions  —  on  the  narrow  de 
file  where  the  Spartan  handfull  withstood  the  gathered  might 
of  a  continent  —  the  battle-field  where  a  world  was  lost  and 
won  —  on  the  widowed  solitude  wherein  Rome  broods  discon- 


HUMAN  LIFE  151 

solate  over  the  fading  wreck  of  her  grandeur  and  her  power, 
or  the  wintry  desolation  wherein  gray-haired  Jerusalem 
crouches  amid  the  ruins  of  her  once  impregnable  towers  and 
peerless  temples — the  ashes  of  her  self-abasement  trampled 
into  her  furrowed  brow  by  the  iron  heel  of  sixty  generations 
of  tyrants.  Through  all  circumstances,  all  events,  this  truth 
presents  itself,  that  Man's  being  is  the  essential  fact,  his  spirit 
the  imparted  vitality  of  the  world. 

Human  Life  !  how  inspiring,  how  boundless  the  theme  ! 
Sadly,  wildly  has  the  Poet  sung  of  it — calmly,  lucidly  has 
the  Historian  traced  its  meandering* —  earnestly,  gravely 
have  the  Priest  and  the  Sage"  exposed  and  reproved  its 
errors  from  the  birth  of  the  Race.  The  Nurse's  story  de 
picts  it — the  Scholar's  research  illustrates  —  the  Statesman's 
harangue  illumines  and  exalts.  From  the  cradle  over  which 
the  young  mother  bends  with  a  novel  sensation  of  wondering 
delight,  to  the  bier  around  which  all  are  melted  in  tho 
brotherhood  of  a  common  sorrow,  this  life  of  ours  is  a  marvel 
and  a  poem. 

Are  we  dwellers  in  the  country  ?  From  that  low-roofed 
cottage  a  youth  is  going  forth,  with  lofty  heart,  to  do  and 
dare  on  the  great  battle-field  of  manly  adventure.  He  has 
given  ear  to  a  father's  counsel,  he  has  knelt  to  receive  a 
mother's  blessing ;  he  has  smiled  at  the  fears  and  regrets 
expressed  by  younger  or  tenderer  hearts  around  him  :  for  a 
sanguine  spirit  urges  him  on,  and  he  sees  already  fortune 
and  honors  awaiting  him  in  the  distant  city  to  which  his 
eager  footsteps  tend.  Not  till  the  hour  of  parting  has  come 
and  passed  does  he  feel  how  heavy  the  chain  he  drags  who 
goes  forth  for  years  from  all  he  loves  on  earth — not  till  the 
stately,  branching  elms  which  overhang  the  dear  spot  have 
waved  their  last  mute  adieu  to  his  backward  glances  —  not 
till  the  stream  which  was  the  companion  of  his  boyish  pas 
times  has  bent  away  from  his  rigid  course  and  buried  itself 
among  the  wooded  hills,  does  he  feel  that  he  has  shaken  off 


152  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

the  companionships  and  supports  of  his  youth,  and  is  utterly 
alone.  Now  nerve  your  quivering  heart,  young  adventurer ! 
Summon  every  thought  of  hope,  and  pride,  and  shame,  and 
press  sternly  onward  ;  for  a  feather's  weight  might  almost 
suffice  to  dash  all  your  high  resolutions — to  chase  away  the 
dreams  of  hope  and  ambition,  and  send  you  back,  an  early 
penitent,  to  that  lowly  home  which  never  seemed  half  so  dear 
before. 

Are  we  dwellers  by  the  sea-side?  Here  the  sailor  is 
bending  the  white  canvas  for  a  voyage  —  it  may  be  around 
the  world.  Before  he  shall  again  drop  anchor  in  the  haven 
he  deems  his  home,  he  may  from  his  vessel's  deck  gaze  on 
the  peaks  of  the  Andes,  the  sulphurous  flames  of  Kirauea, 
or  may  thread  with  his  bark  the  perilous  windings  of  the 
forest-mantled  Oregon  —  may  survey  the  porcelain  towers  of 
Canton,  or  the  naked  site  of  Troy,  whose  very  ruins  have 
vanished,  leaving  no  monument  of  their  existence  save  in 
Homer's  undying  song. 

Here,  too,  the  emigrant  is  bidding  adieu  to  the  ungenial 
land  of  his  birth  and  his  love,  and,  with  his  household  gods 
around  him,  is  seeking  on  a  distant  shore  a  soil  on  which  his 
hopes  may  expand  and  flourish.  There  is  sadness,  there  is 
anguish  in  the  parting  hour :  the  tree  most  carefully  trans 
planted  must  leave  too  many  fibres  in  its  native  soil :  and 
the  life-long  dweller  in  some  secluded  valley,  who  first  finds 
himself  confronted  with  a  thousand  leagues  of  raging  brine, 
across  which  lies  the  way  to  his  unknown  future  home,  may 
well  recoil  and  shudder  at  the  prospect.  But  the  hoarse 
order  to  embark  is  given  and  obeyed :  the  last  adieux  are 
looked  from  streaming  eyes  ;  the  vessel  swings  slowly  from 
her  moorings ;  the  young  look  out  in  wonder  on  the  bleak 
waste  of  stormy  waters,  and  turn  inquiringly  to  those  who 
are  perchance  as  young  in  this  hour's  sensations  as  they. 
And  so  wears'  on  the  passage;  and  at  length,  amid  new 
scenes,  new  toils,  anxieties  and  troubles,  the  pilgrim  finds 


HUMAN  LIFE.  153 

that  Care  rests  its  eternal  burden  on  Man  wherever  he  is 
found  —  that  Earth  has  no  more  an  Eden.  What  recks  it? 
The  same  blue  heaven  bends  lovingly  over  all  the  children 
of  men.  New  scenes,  new  hopes,  new*  prospects,  speedily 
dim  the  memory  of  keenest  disappointments,  of  deepest 
regrets  ;  and  the  heart,  transplanted,  sends  out  its  tendrils 
in  every  direction,  and  learns  to  blossom  and  grow  again. 
And  thus  do  all  of  us,  each  in  his  appointed  sphere  and  sou- 
son,  open  new  chapters  in  the  great  volume  of  Human  Life. 
But  let  us  not  contemplate  only  individual  aspects.  This 
Life  of  ours  has  grander  proportions  if  we  can  but  widen  the 
sweep  of  our  vision  so  as  to  reach  its  far  horizon.  Those  daily 
acts,  those  common  impulses,  which,  viewed  individually,  and 
with  microscopic  or  with  soulless  gaze,  seem  insignificant  or 
trifling,  take  on  a  different  aspect  if  regarded  in  a  more 
catholic  spirit.  Those  myriad  hammers  which,  impelled  by 
brawny  arms,  are  ringing  out  their  rude  melody  day  by 
day,  and  contributing  to  the  comfort  and  sustenance  of  Man 
—  those  fleets  of  hardy  fishers,  now  chasing  the  whale  on  the 
other  side  of  the  globe  to  give  light  to  the  city  mansion  and 
celerity  to  the  wheels  of  the  village  factory  —  those  armies  of 
trappers,  scattered  through  the  glens  of  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains,  each  in  stealthy  solitude  pursuing  his  deadly  trade, 
whence  dames  of  London  and  belles  of  Pekin  alike  shall 
borrow  warmth  and  comeliness  —  let  us  contemplate  these  in 
their  several  classes,  unmindful  of  the  leagues  of  wood,  or 
plain,  or  water  which  chance  to  divide  them.  Readily 
enough  do  we  perceive  and  acknowledge  the  grandeur  of  the 
great  army  which  some  chief  or  despot  assembles  and  draws 
out  to  feed  his  vanity  by  display  or  his  ambition  by  carnage  ; 
but  the  larger  and  nobler  armies  whose  weapons  are  the 
mattock  and  spade,  who  overspread  the  hills  and  line  the 
valleys,  until  beneath  their  rugged  skill  and  persevering 
effort  a  highway  of  Commerce  is  opened  where  late  the  pan 
ther  leaped,  the  deer  disported  —  is  not  theirs  the  nobler 


154  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

spectacle — more  worthy  of  the  orator's  apostrophe,  the 
poet's  song  ?  Let  us  look  boldly,  broadly  out  on  Nature's 
wide  domain.  Let  us  note  the  irregular  yet  persistent  ad 
vance  of  the  pioneers  of  civilization  —  the  forest  conquerors, 
before  whose  lusty  strokes  and  sharp  blades  the  century- 
crowned  wood-monarchs,  rank  after  rank,  come  crashing  to 
the  earth.  From  age  to  age  have  they  kept  apart  the  soil 
and  sunshine,  as  they  shall  do  no  longer.  Onward,  still 
onward,  pours  the  army  of  axe-men,  and  still  before  them 
bow  their  stubborn  foes.  But  yesterday  their  advance  was 
checked  by  the  Ohio  ;  to-day  it  has  crossed  the  Missouri, 
the  Kansas,  and  is  fast  on  the  heels  of  the  flying  buffalo. 
In  the  eye  of  a  true  discernment,  what  host  of  Xerxes  or 
Caesar,  of  Frederick  or  Napoleon,  ever  equaled  this  in  ma 
jesty,  in  greatness  of  conquest,  or  in  true  glory? 

The  mastery  of  Man  over  Nature  —  this  is  an  inspiring 
truth  which  we  must  not  suffer  from  its  familiarity  to  lose  its 
force.  By  the  might  of  his  intellect,  Man  has  not  merely 
made  the  Elephant  his  drudge,  the  Lion  his  diversion,  the 
Whale  his  magazine,  but  even  the  subtlest  and  most  terrible 
of  the  elements  is  the  submissive  instrument  of  his  will.  He 
turns  aside  or  garners  up  the  lightning  ;  the  rivers  toil  in  his 
workshop  ;  the  tides  of  ocean  bear  his  burdens ;  the  hurri 
cane  rages  for  his  use  and  profit.  Fire  and  water  struggle 
for  mastery  that  he  may  be  whisked  over  hill  and  valley 
with  the  celerity  of  the  sunbeam.  The  stillness  of  the  forest 
midnight  is  broken  by  the  snort  of  the  Iron  Horse,  as  he 
drags  the  long  train  from  Lakes  to  Ocean  with  a  slave's 
docility,  a  giant's  strength.  Up  the  long  hill  he  labors, 
over  the  deep  glen  he  skims,  the  tops  of  the  tall  trees  sway 
ing  around  and  below  his  narrow  path.  His  sharp,  quick 
breathings  bespeak  his  impetuous  progress  ;  a  stream  of  fire 
reflects  its  course.  On  dashes  the  resistless,  tireless  steed, 
and  the  morrow's  sun  shall  find  him  at  rest  in  some  far 
mart  of  Commerce,  and  the  partakers  of  his  wizzard  journey 


HUMAN  LIFE.  155 

scattered  to  their  vocations  of  trade  or  pleasure,  unthinking 
of  their  night's  adventure.  What  has  old  Romance  where 
with  to  match  the  every-day  realities  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century  ? 

We  are  in  no  danger  of  estimating  too  highly  the  extra 
ordinary  character  of  the  age  in  which  our  lot  has  been  cast, 
and  of  the  influences  by  which  we  are  surrounded.  Tim 
Present  is  the  proper  theme  of  Poetry,  the  fitting  scene  of 
Romance.  Whoever  shall  even  faintly  realize  the  mighty 
events,  the  stirring  impulses,  the  lofty  character  of  our  time, 
is  in  no  danger  of  passing  through  life  groveling  and  unob 
servant  as  the  dull  beast  that  crops  the  thistles  by  the  way 
side.  The  Past  has  its  lessons,  doubtless,  and  well  is  it  for 
those  who  master  and  heed  them  ;  but,  were  it  otherwise,  the 
Present  has  themes  enough  of  ennobling  interest  to  employ 
all  our  faculties — to  engross  all  our  thoughts,  save  as  they 
should  contemplate  the  still  grander,  vaster  Hereafter.  Do 
they  talk  to  us  of  Grecian  or  Roman  heroism  ?  They  say 
well  ;  but  Genius  died  not  with  Greece  ;  and  Heroism  has 
scarcely  a  recorded  achievement  which  our  own  age  could 
not  parallel.  What  momentary  deed  of  reckless  valor  can 
compare  with  the  life-long  self-devotion  of  the  Missionary  in 
some  far  cluster  of  Indian  lodges,  of  Tartar  huts,  cut  off  from 
society,  from  sympathy,  and  from  earthly  hope  ?  How  easy, 
how  common,  to  dare  death  with  Alexander  !  how  rare  to  live 
nobly  as  Washington,  and  feel  no  ambition  but  that  of  doing 
good !  Take  the  efforts  for  the  elevation  of  the  African  race 
in  our  day  —  ill-directed  as  some  of  them  appear  —  and  yet 
Antiquity  might  well  be  challenged  to  produce  anything  out 
of  the  sphere  of  Sacred  History  half  so  heroic  and  divine. 
Let  us,  then,  waste  little  time  in  looking  back  to  earlier  ages 
for  high  examples  and  deeds  that  stir  the  blood.  Let  us  not 
idly  imagine  that  the  Old  World  embosoms  scenes  and  me 
morials  dearer  to  the  lover  of  Truth,  of  Freedom,  and  of 
ATn.n,  tijn.n  those  of  our  own  clime.  Let  us  repel  aHke  the 


156  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

braggart's  vain-glory  and  the  self-disparagement  of  degene 
racy,  yet  cherish  the  faith  that  nowhere  are  there  purer 
skies,  more  inspiring  recollections,  or  more  magnificent 
landscapes  than  those  in  which  our  own  green  land  rejoices. 
Where  shall  the  patriot  pulse  beat  high  if  not  on  Bunker 
Hill  or  Saratoga?  Where  has  Nature  displayed  her  gran 
deur  if  not  in  the  great  Valley  of  the  Father  of  Waters  ?  Are 
not  the  scenes  of  Man's  noblest  efforts,  of  God's  rarest 
earthly  handiwork,  all  around  and  among  us  ?  Have  not  I 
listened  to  the  roar  of  Niagara  and  stood  by  the  grave  of 
Mount  Vernon  ! 

Let  me  not  be  accused  of  dwelling  too  long  on  the  visible 
and  the  palpable  —  on  external  Nature  when  my  theme  re 
gards  internal  Man.  No  reflecting  mind  can  hesitate  to 
admit  that  to  a  great  extent  the  circumstances  shape  the 
man.  None  of  us  would  have  difficulty  in  pointing  out 
among  his  circle  one  at  least  who  would  have  been  a  Catholic 
at  Rome,  a  Turk  (if  born  such)  at  Constantinople,  an  idolater 
at  Pekin  —  would  it  be  as  easy  to  instance  one  who  would 
not  be  thus  molded  ?  As  with  the  highest  of  all  human 
affirmations  —  Faith  in  God  —  so  with  our  lower  deeds  and 
developments.  All  know  that  the  mountaineer  is  more  hardy 
than  the  dweller  in  the  vales  beneath — the  native  of  a  rugged 
climate  than  he  who  is  ripened  beneath  an  equatorial  sun. 
Have  not  the  raw  breezes  from  snow-clad  hights  been  ever 
held  an  inspiration  to  the  soul  of  Liberty  ?  Is  not  the  sailor 
oftenest  born  beside  the  heaving  expanse  which  he  chooses 
for  his  home  ?  I  would  not  explain  all  differences  of  charac 
ter  or  capacity  by  the  action  of  extraneous  influences  on  the 
immortal  spirit — the  organs  of  the  Phrenologist,  the  decree 
of  the  fatalist,  the  circumstances  of  the  Owenite  —  and  yet  I 
shrink  from  the  temerity  of  setting  bounds  to  their  sway. 
Though  we  speak  of  the  inscrutable  ways  of  the  Deity,  we 
accuse  only  our  own  imperfectness  of  vision.  The  eye  of 
Faith,  and  not  less  that  of  Reason,  recognize  in  all  His 


HUMAN  LIFE.  157 

ways  regular  successions  of  effect  to  cause,  from  the  warm 
ing  into  life  of  an  insect  to  the  creation  of  a  world.  If,  then, 
we  read  that  the  son  and  heir  of  a  wise  and  good  ruler  proved 
a  weak  yet  bloody  tyrant,  let  us  not  rashly  infer  the  proces 
sion  of  Evil  from  Good.  We  have  yet  to  be  assured  that  the 
good  king  was  an  equally  good  father  —  that  pressing  cares 
of  state,  or  possibly  some  defect  of  character,  did  not  incline 
him  to  neglect  the  great  duty  of  training  up  his  son,  and  im 
buing  him  with  the  seeds  of  all  moral  good.  So  with  the 
reprobate  and  outcast  scion  of  an  exemplary  house  —  we  say, 
indeed,  that  his  opportunities  of  good  were  equal  to  those  of 
his  brethren,  and  his  temptations  to  wrong  no  greater  than 
theirs  ;  but  how  do  we  know  ?  It  were  well  for  the  safety 
of  our  ready  and  confident  assertion  if  we  had  first  assured 
ourselves  that  no  inherent  vice  of  physical  organization  —  no 
bodily  defect  preceding  the  susceptibility  to  a  moral  impres 
sion —  no  silent,  unnoted,  but  yet  potent  agency,  has  pro 
duced  the  disparity  we  observe  and  lament,  before  we  had 
so  positively  concluded  that  men  may  gather  grapes  of 
thorns,  or  figs  of  thistles. 

Yet  let  us  not  hotly  and  heedlessly  pursue  this  truth  till 
we  lose  ourselves  and  it  in  the  mazes  of  error,  the  opposite 
of  that  we  would  dissipate.  There  is  very  much  of  human 
attainment  dependent  on  circumstances  ;  let  us  not  forget 
how  much  also  —  I  will  not  say  how  vastly  more  —  depends 
on  essential  Man.  There  is  a  deplorably  immense  multitude 
who  live  but  to  eat  bounteously  and  daintily  —  with  whom  the 
sum  of  life  is  practically  to  compass  the  largest  amount  of 
rich  viands  and  gaudy  trappings  with  the  smallest  outlay  of 
effort  or  perseverance  to  procure  them  —  this  mass  will  be  at 
Rome  Romans,  at  Moscow  Russians,  and  nothing  more. 
There  will  he  some  small  varieties  or  shadings  of  individual 
character,  calculated  to  gratify  by  their  study  the  minute 
curiosity  of  an  entomologist,  and  interesting  to  him  only. 
But  let  one  of  these  human  ephemera  be  awakened,  however 
14 


153  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

casually  or  blindly,  to  the  higher  impulses,  the  nobler  ends 
of  our  being,  and  he  is  instantly  transferred  to  a  different 
world  —  or  rather,  the  world  which  surrounds  him  takes  on  a 
different  aspect,  and  what  before  was  bleak  waste  or  dull 
expanse  of  wooded  hight  and  low  herbage,  assumes  a  deep 
spiritual  significance.  To  his  unfolding,  wondering  soul, 
Nature  is  no  more  a  Poet's  rhapsody,  a  Chemist's  generali 
zation,  but  a  living  presence,  a  solemn  yet  cheering  com 
panionship.  No  matter  whether  he  be,  in  social  position,  a 
peer  or  peasant,  by  birth  Danish  or  Egyptian,  one  glance  at 
the  world  within  has  placed  him  with  those  whose  coun 
trymen  and  brethren  are  all  Mankind.  He  has  no  need  now 
to  change  his  daily  pursuit  or  outward  condition,  for  he 
has  risen  by  inevitable  force  to  an  atmosphere  of  serenity, 
above  the  influence  of  merely  external  influences  and  petty 
limitations.  He  has  not  toilsomely  but  naturally  attained  a 
condition  in  which  the  soul  no  longer  blindly  pants  for  emi 
nence  or  homage,  but  realizes  intensely  that  nobly  to  Do  for 
the  sake  of  nobly  Doing  and  its  intrinsic  results — rightly  to 
Be  for  the  sake  of  rightly  Being — discarding  'the  lust  to 
shine  or  rule,'  is  the  true  end  of  life. 

And  here  let  me  hazard  the  remark  that  our  unquietness, 
our  ant-hill  bustle,  is  the  severest  criticism  on  our  present 
intellectual  condition  and  efforts.  True  greatness  may  be 
said  to  resemble  the  water  in  some  perennial  fountain, 
which  rises  ever  and  spontaneously,  because  in  communi 
cation  with  some  exhaustless  reservoir  more  capacious  and 
higher  than  itself;  while  the  effort  to  be  great  is  like  the 
stream  forced  up  by  some  engine  or  hydrant,  which  tow 
ers  a  moment  unsteadily  and  then  falls  to  water  but  the 
weeds  by  the  way-side.  And  thus  our  young  men  of  prom 
ise,  who  would  seem  to  be  touched  by  a  live  coal  from  off 
the  altar  of  Genius  —  whom  we  are  led  fondly  to  regard  as 
the  light  and  the  hope  of  our  age  —  the  heralds  and  the 
hasteners  of  that  fairer  future  our  hearts  so  throbbingly 


HUMAN  LIFE.  159 

anticipate  —  seem  for  the  most  part  to  lack  that  element  of  nat 
ural  quietude,  of  unconscious  strength,  which  we  are  rightly 
accustomed  to  consider  a  prediction  and  an  accompaniment 
of  the  highest  Manhood.  Here  in  some  rude  hamlet — in 
some  boorish  neighborhood — there  starts  into  view  a  rare 
youth,  whom  the  Divine  spark  wrould  seem  to  have  quick 
ened —  who  bids  fair  to  freshen  by  at  least  a  chaplet  the 
dusty  pathway  of  human  endeavor.  But  forthwith  the  ge 
nius  must  be  bandaged  into  rigidity  —  some  education  son 
ciety,  or  kindred  contrivance  for  the  promotion  of  dullness 
and  mediocrity,  must  take  hold  of  him  and  place  him  in  its 
go-cart  —  there  must  be  tomes  of  word-knowledge  and  the 
petrifactions  of  by-gone  wisdom  hurled  through  his  cra 
nium —  he  must  be  led  away  from  all  useful  labor  of  the 
hands,  and  his  already  precocious  intellect  subjected  to  the 
hot-house  culture  of  some  seminary,  no  matter  how  un- 
suited  to  his  mental  or  social  condition  ;  thus  losing  his 
independence,  essential  and  pecuniary,  and  putting  his 
whole  life  upon  a  single  throw  of  the  dice,  and  they  so 
loaded  that  the  chances  are  heavily  against  him.  And  this 
is  called  developing  the  man,  and  making  the  most  of  his 
natural  gifts,  though  it  would  seem  quite  as  likely  to  blast 
them  altogether.  With  new  scenes  and  an  utter  transfor 
mation  of  attitude  and  aims,  come  strange  and  dizzying 

J       o 

excitement,  extravagant  hopes,  inordinate  ambition,  along 
with  novel  temptings  to  dissipation  on  the  one  hand,  as  well 
as  to  excessive  study  on  the  other.  I  will  not  say  that  the 
result  of  this  course  may  not  in  most  instances  be  satis 
factory  ;  I  only  urge  that  you  put  at  hazard  the  youth  whom 
Nature  has  marked  for  noble  ends,  trusting  to  make  of  him 
the  man  of  profound  acquirement,  who  after  all  may  be 
worth  less  than  the  material  out  of  which  he  was  con 
structed.  May  we  not  rather  trust  something  to  Nature  ? 
Would  we  willingly  exchange  to-day  the  ROBERT  BURNS 
she  gave  us  for  his  counterpart  educated  in  a  University? 


160  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

would  we  not  prefer  that  the  poor,  rudely  taught  Ayrshire 
plowman  had  never  seen  Edinburgh  and  its  cultivated 
circles  at  all  ? 

And  yet  I  have  only  taken  hold  of  one  corner  of  the 
forcing  system.  Its  widest  if  not  its  worst  evils  are  felt  by 
those  our  impromptu  collegian  leaves  behind  him  —  in  the 
conviction  impressed  upon  the  youth  left  in  the  hamlet  that 
they  can  never  be  anything  but  ox-drivers,  because  they  can 
•not  enjoy  the  advantages  of  what  is  termed  a  Classical  Edu 
cation.  Hence  the  poison  of  disquiet  and  discontent — the 
irresolution  to  act  worthily  under  a  mistaken  impression  that 
adverse  circumstances  have  forbidden  that  anything  shall 
worthily  be  done.  I  confess  I  look  with  anxiety  on  what 
seems  to  me  the  perverted  aspiration  so  universal  among  us. 
There  is  an  incessant  straining  for  outward  and  visible  ad 
vantages —  to  be  Legislators,  Governors,  Professional  men, 
Teachers  —  there  is  too  little  appreciation  of  that  greatness 
which  is  intrinsic  and  above  the  reach  of  accident.  I  am 
not  insensible  to  the  advantages  of  a  systematic  induction 
into  all  the  arcana  of  Science  —  of  a  knowledge  of  Lan 
guages  and  a  mastery  of  their  vast  treasures  —  the  possession 
even  of  power  and  its  honors.  All  these  are  well  in  their 
way,  but  they  are  not  properly  within  the  legitimate  reach 
of  all  who  feel  that  they  have  souls. 

More  intently  than  even  these  I  would  have  our  young 
men  contemplate  and  be  moulded  upon  such  characters 
and  lives  as  those  of  our  FRANKLIN,  the  penniless,  active 
Apprentice,  the  thriving,  contented  Mechanic,  the  peerless 
Philosopher,  the  idolized  yet  not  flattered  ambassador ;  our 
WASHINGTON,  carrying  the  surveyor's  chain  through  swamp 
and  briar,  forming  with  his  own  hatchet  a  rude  raft  for 
crossing  the  deep-shaded,  savage-haunted  Ohio  ;  long  and 
ably  defending  his  country  at  the  head  of  her  armies ;  at 
length  laying  aside  the  care  of  a  Nation's  destinies,  resist 
ing  the  affectionate  entreaties  of  millions  that  he  would  con- 


HUMAN  LIFE.  161 

tinue  to  bear  sway  over  half  a  continent,  in  order  that  he 
may  enjoy,  for  the  brief  remainder  of  an  active,  glorious 
life,  the  blessings  of  the  domestic  fireside,  the  untroubled 
sleep  which  comes  only  to  the  couch  of  private  life.  There 
is  here  a  swreet  unconsciousness  of  greatness  that  we  realize 
and  cling  to  at  a  glance.  We  recognise  under  every  change 
of  circumstance  the  strong  and  true  Man,  superior  to  any 
freak  of  Fortune.  No  culture  could  have  made  these  men 
more  or  less  than  they  appear  alike  to  us  and  to  all  ob-% 
servers.  Is  not  the  lesson  they  teach  us  at  once  distinct 
and  invigorating? 

Let  me  not  be  misunderstood.  I  value  and  prize  Learn 
ing,  Knowledge,  Culture,  while  esteeming  Self-Culture  and 
Self-Development  the  sum  of  them  all.  I  would  have  no 
youth  reject  facilities  for  acquiring  them  which  may  fairly 
and  justly  present  themselves,  so  that  he  may  embrace  them 
without  sacrifice  of  his  proper  independence  or  neglect  of 
his  proper  duties  and  responsibilities  as  a  son,  a  brother,  a 
citizen.  What  I  object  to  is  the  too  common  notion  that  the 
higher  Education  of  the  Schools  is  essential  to  his  develop 
ment  and  his  usefulness  in  life,  thus  making  the  Circum 
stances  everything,  the  Man  nothing.  If  I  have  not  incor 
rectly  observed,  the  effect  of  this  prevalent  impression  is 
often  to  pervert  and  misplace  the  individual  whom  it  spe 
cially  contemplates,  while  it  is  morally  certain  to  work 
injury  to  the  great  mass  of  his  brethren  by  original  condition. 
A  youth  in  humble  life  evinces  talent,  genius,  or  the  love 
of  knowledge  and  facility  of  acquiring  it,  which  are  quite 
commonly  confounded  with  either  or  both.  Forthwith  he 
must  be  taken  hold  of,  and  transplanted,  and  stimulated  to 
acquirement,  in  an  atmosphere  and  under  influences  wholly 
different  from  those  which  have  thus  far  nourished  and 
quickened  him.  Now  I  do  not  say  that  this  novel,  stimu 
lating  process  will  necessarily  mildew  or  distort  him  —  I  do 
not  say  that  he  is  inevitably  thrust  by  it  into  a  strange  orbit 
14* 


162  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

for  which  he  is  unbalanced  and  unfitted  —  I  do  not  say  that 
he  will  be  educated  into  flightiness  or  dunce-hood,  though 
such  cases  may  be  —  have  been.  What  I  would  most  earn 
estly  insist  on  is  this,  that  the  continual  repetition  of  this 
process  confirms  our  aspiring  youth  in  the  mistaken  impres 
sion  that  they  can  be  nothing  without  a  collegiate  education 
and  a  profession,  while  it  depresses  and  stunts  the  undistin 
guished  many  by  a  still  keener  humiliation.  They  had  not 
hoped  nor  aspired  to  give  light  toothers  —  they  had  pre 
sumed  only  to  sun  themselves  in  the  rays  of  intellect  which 
had  burst  on  their  own  unnoted  sphere.  In  the  young  aspi 
rant  to  whom  their  village,  their  class,  had  given  birth,  they 
recognized  with  gladness  and  pride  an  evidence  of  the 
essential  brotherhood  of  Man  —  a  link  between  the  low 
liest  and  the  most  exalted.  He  has  shed  a  redeeming  halo 
of  glory  and  beauty,  of  hope  and  joy,  over  the  triteness  and 
drudgery  of  their  daily  paths.  But,  in  the  first  moment 
of  their  fond  exultation,  the  unfolding  genius  expands  its 
new-found  wings  and  soars  beyond  their  sphere,  leaving 
them  to  gaze  with  sinking  heart  on  its  ascending,  receding 
flight,  troubled  and  depressed  where  they  should  have  been 
assured  and  strengthened.  As  a  farmer,  an  artisan  in  their 
midst,  he  would  have  been  their  glory  and  blessing  —  their 
'guide,  philosopher  and  friend'  —  for  there  is  nothing  in 
the  contact  of  true  genius  which  discourages  nor  discon 
certs  ;  but  he  hies  away  to  some  distant  city  or  seminary ; 
and  now  he  is  no  longer  of  them,  but  has  visibly  enrolled 
himself  in  a  different  class,  whose  members  they  may  ad 
mire,  look  up  to,  and  even  reverence,  but  can  not  clasp  in 
the  bands  of  a  true  and  genial  sympathy.  There  are  too 
many  folds  of  papyrus  between  his  heart  and  theirs.  What 
I  would  urge,  then,  is  this,  that  the  deep  want  of  our  time  is 
not  a  greater  number  of  scholars,  professional  men,  pastors, 
educators,  (though  possibly  there  may  be  some  improvement 
here  in  the  quality ;)  the  need  of  new,  strong,  penetrating 


HUMAN  LIFE.  163 

and  healthy  men  is  felt  rather  in  the  less  noticeable  walks 
of  life.  We  need  to  bring  the  sunlight  of  Genius  to  bear 
on  the  common  walks  —  to  dignify  the  sphere  as  well  as 
facilitate  the  operations  of  the  Useful  Arts  ;  to  hallow  and 
exalt  the  pathway  of  honest,  unpretending  Industry.  It  is 
here  that  the  next  decided  movement  is  needed  and  will  be 
made  in  the  way  of  Human  Progress  —  not  a  pushing  for 
ward  of  the  vanguard,  but  a  bringing  up  of  the  main  body. 
The  deep  want  of  the  time  is  that  the  vast  resources  and  « 
capacities  of  Mind,  the  far-stretching  powers  of  Genius  and 
of  Science,  be  brought  to  bear  practically  and  intimately  on 
Agriculture,  the  Mechanic  Arts,  and  all  the  now  rude  and 
simple  processes  of  Day-Labor,  and  not  merely  that  these 
processes  may  be  perfected  and  accelerated,  but  that  the 
benefits  of  the  improvement  may  accrue  in  at  least  equal 
measure  to  those  whose  accustomed  means  of  livelihood  — 
scanty  at  best — are  interfered  with  and  overturned  by  the 
change.  Not  merely  that  these  be  measurably  enriched,  but 
that  they  be  informed  and  elevated  by  the  vast  industrial 
transformations  now  in  progress  or  in  embryo,  is  the  obvious 
requirement.  Here  opens  a  field  for  truly  heroic  exertion 
and  achievement,  far  wider  and  nobler  than  that  of  any 
Political  heroism  of  ancient  or  modern  time,  because  its 
results  must  be  deeper,  more  pervading,  more  enduring. 
I  would  insist,  then,  that  our  youth  of  promise  shall  not  be 
divorced  from  the  physical  toil,  the  material  interests  of  our 
and  their  natal  condition,  while  qualifying  themselves  for 
the  highest  spheres  of  usefulness  and  endeavor.  I  would 
not  have  them,  like  Geography  in  our  atlases,  contemplate 
that  hemisphere  in  which  the  greatest  advances  have  already 
been  effected,  to  the  exclusion  of  that  wherein  the  greatest 
triumphs  yet  remain  to  be  achieved.  I  would  not  have 
them  bedeck  themselves  in  the  spoils  of  by-gone*  victories, 
and  forget  that  the  adversaries,  Ignorance  and  Obstacle, 
yet  remain  formidable  and  imminent. 


164  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

But,  above  all,  I  would  have  no  youth  feel  that  he  is  de 
barred  the  opportunities  of  a  useful  and  honorable,  if  he 
please,  a  lofty  and  heroic  career,  because  the  means  of  ob 
taining  a  Classical  Education  are  denied  him.  I  will  not 
point  him  to  the  many  who  have  inscribed  their  names  high 
on  the  rolls  of  enviable  fame  without  such  Education,  for  the 
logic  therein  implied  might  as  well  be  used  to  reconcile  him 
to  the  loss  of  an  eye  or  an  arm.  I  will  not  argue  to  him  that 
•  circumstances  are  indifferent  or  unimportant ;  I  have  freely 
admitted  the  contrary.  But  I  would  urge  to  such  a  one  that 
the  essential  circumstance  is  the  awakening  of  the  soul  to  a 
consciousness  of  its  own  powers  and  responsibilities,  and  that 
this  is  determined  in  the  very  fact  of  his  seeking,  with  eye 
single  and  heart  pure,  a  larger  development,  a  more 
thorough  culture.  This  point  attained,  let  him  doubt 
nothing,  fear  nothing,  save  his  own  steadiness  of  purpose  and 
loftiness  of  aim.  Be  not  discouraged,  then,  awakened  youth 
in  some  lowly  cottage,  some  boorish  valley,  by  the  magnitude 
of  others'  attainments,  the  richness  of  others'  facilities  for 
acquiring  and  investigating,  as  contrasted  with  the  seeming 
poverty  of  your  own  ;  but  remember  and  be  reverently  thank 
ful  that  the  same  high  stars  which,  shining  so  brightly  upon 
the  palace,  the  university,  the  senate-house,  have  kindled  the 
souls  of  philosophers,  sages,  statesmen  in  times  past,  now 
look  down  as  kindly,  inspiringly  on  you  ;  and  in  the  fact 
that  they  have  touched  an  answering  chord  within  you  is  an 
earnest  that  their  companionship  shall  nevermore  be  sullen 
nor  fruitless.  From  this  hour  shall  all  Nature  be  your 
teacher,  your  ministrant ;  her  infinite  grandeur  no  longer  a 
barren  pageant ;  her  weird  and  solemn  voices  no  more  un 
meaning  sounds.  Though  they  should  come  to  you  no  more 
at  second-hand  from  the  lips  of  her  Pindar,  her  Shakspere, 
they  can  *never  more  be  hushed  nor  unheeded  ;  they  have 
passed  from  the  realm  of  darkness,  of  doubt,  of  speculation, 


HUMAN  LIFE.  165 

and  become  to  you  the  deepest  and  grandest  realities  of 
Human  Life  ! 

But  Life  is  not  all  aspiration.  Clouds  and  shadows  over 
spread  even  its  morning  promise  ;  they  oftener  settle  densely 
and  darkly  down  upon  its  evening  horizon.  Let  us  briefly 
regard  them. 

We  must  begin  with  that  vast,  deplorable  fact  of  Sin,  which 
early  intrudes  itself  upon  us  in  any  attempt  to  measure  the 
extent  of  external  influences  on  the  human  character  :  How 
shall  we  regard  it '/  It  stands  before  us  in  all  its  towering 
altitude,  throwing  its  gloomy  shadows  across  the  whole  land 
scape  of  Human  Life.  We  must  look  it  fairly  in  the  face, 
for  no  survey  of  our  subject  can  be  even  superficially  correct 
that  affects  to  disregard  it.  Sin,  without  which  this  world 
would  even  now  be  an  Eden,  with  which  it  is  so  nearly  a 
Pandemonium — the  haggard  wrecks  of  its  ravage  are  all 
around  and  among  us  :  they  stare  upon  us  from  the  drunk 
ard's  hovel,  the  felon's  dreary  cell  ;  they  creak  in  the  mid 
night  wind  from  the  murderer's  gibbet;  they  meet  us  in  the 
most  extraordinary  events ;  they  hover  and  flit  along  our 
daily  paths.  The  child  opens  its  eyes  on  a  world  made  foul 
and  wretched  by  Sin  alone,  looks  but  fitfully  around  on  the 
general  desolation,  and  hastens  to  plunge  in  the  polluted 
and  polluting  current,  and  dash  its  waves  still  higher  up  the 
banks  which  it  threatens  to  overwhelm.  Is  there  a  stern 
fatality  in  this  V  Does  Innate  Depravity,  taken  in  its  most 
positive,  emphatic  acceptation,  sufficiently  account  for  it? 
I  do  not  perceive  that  it  does.  Man's  depravity  never  induces 
him  in  material  concerns  to  act  so  blindly  —  to  give  much  for 
nothing — to  journey  days  through  mire  and  thorn  for  that 
which  is  found  abundantly  at  home,  and  can  not  be  found  by 
thus  pursuing  it.  How  shall  we  account,  then,  for  this  uni 
versal  madness  —  this  horrible  infatuation  ?  In  pursuing  this 
inquiry,  I  shall  endeavor  to  state  philosophic  truth  only,  and 
to  pursue  it  by  philosophic  methods.  The  essential  depravity 


166  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

which  leads  man  to  trample  wilfully  on  the  laws  of  his 
Creator — to  pursue  his  own  ends  indifferently  through  good 
and  evil,  uncaring  who  suffers  so  that  his  gratification  is  se 
cured —  I  leave  to  be  exposed  and  reproved  by  the  Sacred 
Teacher,  while  I  endeavor  in  all  humility  to  consider  trans 
gression  simply  as  error,  and  to  trace  out  the  nature  and 
source  of  the  immense  mistake  so  generally  fallen  into  by  the 
hapless  children  of  Adam. 

The  individual  Man  awakes  on  earth  to  moral  conscious 
ness,  surrounded  by  warring  influences  —  nay,  endued,  in 
formed,  possessed,  by  warring  impulses.  On  the  one  side 
are  arrayed  his  Passions,  such  as  we  now  find  them,  demand 
ing  gratification  at  all  cost — Luxury,  Power,  Ease,  and  all 
sensual  delights.  On  the  other  side,  stern  as  in  the  primal 
garden,  gleams  the  Law,  saying  plainly  to  all,  "  Refrain  ! 
Obey  !"  Perhaps  it  does  not  become  Omnipotence  to  reason 
with  His  creatures  minutely  and  continually  on  the  justice 
and  propriety  of  His  requirements  —  it  is  enough  that  those 
requirements  are  distinctly  made  known.  Adam  is  not  told 
that  the  interdicted  fruit  is  unpalatable  or  intrinsically  poi 
sonous  ;  it  should  be  enough  for  him  to  know  that  it  is  forbid 
den.  But  here,  where  Divine  Law  stops,  Human  Education 
should  begin.  What  is  our  knowledge  but  the  collected  ex 
perience  of  the  Race  ?  and  what  truth  in  this  so  important, 
so  prominent,  as  that  everywhere,  in  all  cases,  without  the 
possibility  of  exception,  Virtue  secures  Happiness  and  Vice 
produces  Misery  ? 

I  insist  that  this  be  made  the  subject  of  scientific  and 
palpable  demonstration.  I  insist  that  this  is  the  scope  and 
the  fullness  of  all  true  teaching,  without  which  all  beside  is 
a  hollow  mockery  of  knowledge.  I  insist  that  the  Education 
which  excludes  Moral  and  even  Religious  culture  —  using  the 
term  Religious  in  its  legitimate  relation  to  the  sentiment  of 
devotion,  and  with  no  regard  to  creeds  or  formulas — is  at  best 
superficial  and  defective  —  it  maybe,  pernicious  and  destruc- 


HUMAN  LIFE.  167 

live.  I  will  not  now  say  how  much  or  how  little  of  Education 
should  be  left  to  the  school  and  its  ministrations  ;  but  I  do 
say,  that  to  talk  of  a  man  being  educated  when  he  has  not 
yet  learned  profoundly  that  any  wrong  action,  however  out 
wardly  successful  or  unrebuked,  is  a  deplorable  mistake  on 
the  part  of  the  wilful  doer  —  a  ruinous  subtraction  from  the 
sum  of  his  own  happiness,  considered  simply  in  itself  and  its 
irresistible  consequences  —  is  to  use  words  in  utter  contempt 
of  their  true  meaning.  Nay,  more  :  our  Education  should  not 
merely  imprint  on  the  mind  the  general  truth  already  stated, 
but  the  full  and  particular  reasons  for  it  in  all  cases  —  should 
show  why  and  how  the  miser,  the  swindler,  the  drunkard, 
the  hypocrite,  the  libertine,  all  stand  in  their  own  light  —  all 
make  war  upon  themselves,  while  they  imagine  they  are 
draining  others'  measure  of  enjoyment  to  fill  to  overflowing 
their  own.  This  truth  thoroughly  mastered,  the  road  to  all 
desirable  knowledge,  to  all  true  happiness,  lies  open  and  easy 
before  the  learner.  Shall  it  not  be  the  triumph  of  our  age 
to  unfold  and  apply  a  truth  so  simple  yet  so  mighty  ?  The 
child  but  once  suffers  by  clutching  the  glowing  fire-brand  ; 
it  knows  thenceforth  that  the  warmth  so  genial  in  its  ap 
pointed  sphere  becomes  anguish  and  destruction  if  grasped 
thus  recklessly.  Is  it  not  time  that  civilized,  cultivated  Man 
were  at  least  as  truly  wise  as  the  infant  ? 

Let  none  imagine  that  I  am  proposing  to  cure  a  cancer  of 
the  heart  by  some  external  ablution  :  I  have  not  affirmed  that 
the  most  lucid  teaching,  the  most  careful  moral  culture,  will 
imbue  man  necessarily  with  a  right  spirit.  But  I  do  con 
tend  that,  if  all  the  natural  and  unavoidable  consequences  of 
Crime  and  Wrong-doing  were  clearly  and  fully  set  before 
our  Youth  from  infancy,  and  the  events  transpiring,  the  in 
fluences  surrounding  them,  were  made  to  illustrate  and  en 
force  the  lessons  so  imparted,  there  would  be  impediments 
to  actual  transgression  which  it  would  be  outright  madness 
to  overleap.  What  thief  would  steal  if  he  saw  the  officers 


168  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

of  justice  ready  to  seize  him  in  the  act,  with  the  door  of  the 
State's  Prison  just  opening  to  receive  him  ?  Though  fallen 
as  Lucifer,  he  plainly  could  not  do  it.  What  we  need,  then, 
in  our  Practical  Education,  is  to  bring  home  the  conse 
quences  of  transgression  as  clearly  and  directly  to  every 
man's  understanding  as  in  this  instance  ;  to  show  our  youth 
that  they  can  not  possibly  step  aside  from  the  path  of  duty 
without  bringing  upon  themselves  suffering  and  degradation. 
I  would  have  them  taught  beyond  cavil  that  any  attempt  to 
clutch  enjoyment  by  Sin  is  as  insane  as  undertaking  to  warm 
the  hands  by  grasping  a  red-hot  bar  of  iron.  This  teaching 
does  not  take  the  place  of  truly  Religious  discipline  and 
culture  —  it  is  not  intended  to  do  so.  A  man  may  be  too 
wise  to  do  wrong,  and  yet  be  at  heart  far  from  right.  I  urge 
only  that  the  community  should  secure  itself  by  teaching  the 
benighted  the  suicidal  mischiefs  of  wrong-doing,  even  though 
the  lesson  be  given  without  benevolence  and  received  with 
out  essential  amendment. 

Alas  for  us  !  we  are  a  dwarfed,  distorted  Race  !  We  are 
but  the  fragments  and  pigmies  of  what  we  might  and  should 
be  !  Here  and  there  we  see  a  Judge,  a  General,  a  Ruler  — 
perchan*  a  Poet,  an  Orator,  a  Pastor  —  how  seldom  a  whole 
and  complete  Man  !  Our  excellence,  what  there  is  of  it* 
runs  in  veins,  in  seams,  in  zig-zags  —  seldom  is  it  found  dif 
fused  and  equable.  Could  a  mental  daguerreotype  be  held 
up  before  us  —  one  on  which  the  fullnesses  and  deficiencies 
of  the  character  should  vividly  appear — what  deformities  and 
defects  should  we  not  be  surprised  to  discern  !  far  beyond 
any  ability  of  paint  and  patches,  of  whalebone  and  padding, 
to  disguise  or  conceal.  What  indiscreet  Philanthropists ! 
what  godless  Patriots  !  what  uncharitable  Devotees  !  Must 
we  abandon  in  despair  the  hope  of  a  truer  Manhood  ?  Must 
Human  Virtue  be  ever  a  tiny  rivulet  meandering  through  a 
boundless  bog  of  prejudice,  selfishness,  and  passion  ?  Let 
us  hope  otherwise. 


HUMAN  LIFE.  169 

And  yet  I  derive  less  encouragement  than  many  are  en 
abled  to  do  from  that  brilliant  aurora  in  their  eyes  —  in  mine 
it  has  some  suspicious  likeness  to  a  meteor,  a  will-o'-wisp  — 
which  they  grandly  propound  as  the  "  Progress  of  the  Hu 
man  Race."  High-sounding  words  these,  and  most  flatter 
ing  is  their  sonorous  iteration  to  our  insatiable  vanity  and 
conceit.  If  they  were  intended  only  to  assert  that  Human 
Nature  has  a  capacity  for  vast  improvement  —  that  it  ought 
to  be  wiser  and  better  with  each  successive  generation  —  or 
even  that  the  small  portion  of  our  race  which  has  enjoyed 
the  greatest  advantages  of  position,  climate,  traditional 
wisdom,  and  of  Divine  enlightenment,  have  improved,  are 
improving  —  I  accept  it  most  heartily.  But  this  is  by  no 
means  all  that  the  flowery  orators  of  our  time,  the  Philoso 
phers  of  the  latest  French  School  and  their  admiring  followers 
among  us,  assert  and  dilate  on.  They  affirm  (if  I  do  not 
greatly  misapprehend  them)  the  existence  of  a  principle  of 
Progress  in  Man  —  a  constant  improvement  founded  in  the 
very  laws  of  his  being,  —  and  one  of  their  latest  essays 
declares  that  in  those  eras  when  the  Race  has  appeared 
visibly,  palpably  to  recede  into  deeper  darkness  —  as  in  the 
centuries  which  witnessed  the  decline  and  subversion  of  the 
Roman  power — that  even  then  the  light  was  not  diminished, 
but  obscured,  as  when  a  new  load  of  fuel  is  thrown  upon  the 
roaring  fire,  diminishing  for  a  season  the  brightness  of  the 
blaze,  but  increasing  the  intensity  of  the  heat  within.  Not 
so  have  /  learned  history  —  not  so  regarded  the  monuments 
or  the  story  of  Human  Advancement.  Whether  early 
Egyptian  civilization  and  culture  were  in  any  sense  the 
fruit  of  growth  and  progression,  and  not  rather  the  result 
of  some  carefully  treasured  and  guarded  traditions  of  the 
primal  state  of  Man,  may  I  think  be  well  doubted  —  I  think 
has  been  successfully  disputed  by  philosophic  and  critical 
observers.  The  means  of  positive  solution  to  that  deep 
enigma  are  doubtless  buried  for  ever  with  the  Priesthood  of 
15 


170  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

that  mysterious  realm.  Greek  elevation  and  refinement 
sprang  so  directly  from  a  few  mighty  master-spirits  —  say 
Homer,  Pythagoras,  Plato  —  that,  even  under  the  inspiring 
influences  of  clime  and  scenery,  of  sea  and  skies,  which  will 
ever  make  the  dwellers  by  the  ^Egean  and  the  Adriatic  a 
people  eminent  for  genius  and  daring,  without  these  we  can 
scarcely  imagine  the  Greece  of  Miltiades  and  Leonidas,  of 
Epaminondas  and  Pericles,  to  have  had  an  existence.  From 
the  humble  cot  of  the  peaceful  and  unregarded  student  of 
Nature  and  votary  of  Truth,  from  the  tremulous  and  famine- 
enfeebled  chant  of  the  blind  old  beggar  of  Scio,  went  forth 
the  power  which  hurled  back  into  the  Hellespont  the  legions 
of  Xerxes  and  changed  the  destiny  of  a  world.  Roman 
culture,  what  there  was  of  it  worth  recalling  and  commend 
ing,  was  so  directly  an  imitation  of  the  Greek,  that  it  de 
serves  no  special  consideration.  And  so  far  is  continued 
Progress,  higher  and  higher  Attainment,  from  being,  in  my 
view,  a  law  of  Human  Nature,  that  I  believe  the  Civilization 
of  Antiquity  had  attained  and  passed  its  zenith  before  the 
influence  of  Christianity  began  to  be  intensely  felt ;  and 
that,  but  for  that  influence,  so  high  a  point  of  culture  would 
never,  within  the  range  of  natural  causes,  have  been  reached 
again.  Only  through  some  new  infusion  of  the  Divine, 
could  the  smouldering  embers  of  Manhood  have  been  kin 
dled  to  a  more  genial  warmth,  a  brighter  radiance,  than  had 
already  been  manifested. 

No !  vain  is  the  conceit,  mischievous  the  illusion,  that  the 
Human  Race  progresses  by  some  law  of  its  being,  and  that 
the  far  Future,  merely  because  it  is  future,  shall  be  better 
and  loftier  than  the  Past.  Let  the  dreamer  of  this  filtering 
vision  survey  the  vain-gloriously  styled  Celestial  Empire, 
trace  back  its  mouldy  chronicles  through  thirty  centuries  of 
utter  stagnation  —  stand  upon  the  ruins  (if  he  can  find  them) 
of  mighty  Babylon,  above  the  fallen  and  imbedded  pillars 
of  her  temples,  theaters,  and  palaces,  which  no  longer  afford 


HUMAN  LIFE.  171 

a  shelter  even  for  the  wolf  and  hyena,  and  look  abroad  on 
the  scattered  hordes  of  miserable  and  famished  robbers  of 
the  desert  who  roam  here  unconscious  that  a  great  city  ever 
existed — explore,  if  you  would  rather,  the  crumbling  monu 
ments,  the  still  towering  pyramids  and  delicate  sculptures 
of  Palenque  and  Uxmal,  inquire  their  origin  and  history  of 
the  degraded  savages  who  dwell  around  them  after  three 
centuries  of  Christian  teaching,  and  then  judge  of  the  fallacy 
which  affirms  Progress  to  be  a  law  of  our  Nature,  and  its  un- 
ebbing  tides  the  land-marks  of  Time.  No  !  friends  of  Man  ! 
only  through  ardent  and  patient  effort,  by  heroic  endurance 
and  high-souled  endeavor,  aided,  impelled  by  the  good  Prov 
idence  of  God,  and  led  by  those  whom  it  leads  and  vouch 
safes  us,  does  the  capacity  of  our  Race  for  improvement 
and  elevation  evolve  itself.  Imperative  is  the  obligation 
which  rests  upon  us  to  stand  not  idly  by,  expecting  the 
foaming  current  of  human  ignorance,  error  and  wrong  to 
exhaust  itself,  but  to  embark  earnestly  in  the  great  work  of 
resisting  and  overcoming  it,  assured  that  only  through  sys 
tematic  exertion  will  it  ever  be  diminished  in  volume  or  in 
force. 

But  Life  has  not  rugged  and  repulsive  aspects  only  — 
even  perverted  and  degraded  as  it  is,  it  smiles  upon  us 
through  kindly  and  sympathizing  eyes.  Viewed  in  a  genial 
spirit,  it  presents  themes  of  elevating,  chastening  contempla 
tion.  Not  in  the  rough  and  stormy  collisions  of  the  market 
place,  the  forum,  the  senate,  the  battle-field,  are  its  true 
nobility,  its  essential  beauty  manifested  ;  but  in  the  uncalcu- 
lating  hospitality  of  some  rude  squatter  on  a  Texan  prairie 
—  in  the  heart-gushing  charity  of  some  Arab  or  African 
woman,  who  in  the  desert  eagerly  proffers  the  scanty  morsel 
of  food  which  stands  between  her  and  famine,  to  nourish  the 
drooping  stranger  of  whose  nation  she  never  heard  till  yester 
day —  in  the  clustering  around  some  lowly  New-England  fire 
side  of  the  long  scattered  members  of  a  family  which  passed 


172  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

its  childhood  thereby,  freely  disbursing  the  hoarded  coin 
they  ill  can  spare,  that  they  may  gather  from  distant  Ohio, 
Iowa,  and  Mississippi,  once  more  beneath  the  dear  old  raft 
ers,  so  blackened  with  smoke  and  age,  to  receive  for  the  last 
time  the  tottering  father's  grave,  affectionate  counsel,  the 
pious  mother's  fervent,  tearful  blessing.  And  still  the  great 
world  rolls  on,  with  empty  noise  and  frivolous  iterations,  and 
the  impatient  soul  exclaims,  "How  fruitless,  how  tiresome  are 
these  succeeding  To-Days  ! — what  use  to  bear  with  them 
longer,  expecting  the  good  which  never  comes  ?"  Be  not  so 
hasty,  choleric  friends  !  Perchance  at  this  very  moment,  in 
the  brain  of  some  nameless,  noteless  dreamer,  some  awkward, 
bashful  boy,  whom  the  world  would  not  condescend  even  to 
laugh  at,  the  Idea  is  silently  maturing  which  shall  transform 
and  vivify  the  whole  career  of  man.  Whether  it  shall  as 
sume  a  Physical  or  Moral  bearing — shall  teach  us  to  ride 
the  thunderbolt  or  revel  in  the  outermost  ether  —  shall  bridge 
the  Atlantic,  or  only  bridle  its  fiercest  waves,  and  cause 
them  to  impel  the  calm,  majestic  vessel  directly  athwart 
their  raving  breakers  —  shall  detect  the  hidden  metals  in  the 
beds  a  hundred  feet  below  the  surface,  where  they  have  lain 
unimagined  since  creation,  or  draw  from  the  unfathomed 
deep  the  treasures  it  has  amassed  through  forty  centuries, 
who  may  tell?  Better,  doubtless,  than  any,  than  all  of 
these,  could  it  secure  to  every  child  the  blessings  of  Intel 
lectual  and  Moral  Culture  —  to  every  man  and  woman  the 
means  and  opportunity  of  employing  the  faculties  God  has 
given  in  such  manner  as  best  to  promote  the  welfare  of  all 
His  creatures,  while  securing  beyond  contingency  a  compe 
tent  support  to  each. 

Of  all  Reforms  not  strictly  spiritual,  that  which  shall  yet 
secure  opportunity  and  a  just  and  fair  reward  to  every  one 
who  is  willing  to  contribute  his  best  exertions  in  any  sphere 
of  industry  and  usefulness  to  the  aggregate  of  human  efforts 
for  the  satisfaction  of  human  wants — which  shall  secure  to 


HUMAN  LIFE.  173 

every  man  and  woman  the  Right  to  Labor,  and  to  enjoy  rea 
sonably  the  fruits  of  such  Labor  —  appears  to  me  the  great 
est,  the  most  essential,  and  one  which  no  generous  and  en 
lightened  mind  can  afford  to  despair  of  attaining. 

—  The  vital  principle  which  must  be  the  basis  of  a  true  life 
is  forgetfulness  of  self  in  aspiration  for  general  good.  The 
act,  of  which  selfish  gratification  or  advantage  is  the  impulse, 
can  not  be  holy  nor  heroic  —  it  can  scarcely  be  other  than 
ignoble  and  wrong.  A  life  of  selfish  aims  and  exertions  ! 
how  sordid  and  despicable  ! — how  groveling  its  morality  — 
how  lean  its  virtue !  —  how  icy  and  stolid  its  innocence  ! 
And  yet  this  is  the  acme  of  much  of  the  teaching  and  more 
of  the  example  of  the  world.  That  evil  inevitably  leads  to 
degradation  and  misery,  this  is  a  truth  which  should  receive 
every  practicable  demonstration  — which  should  be  early  and 
deeply  imprinted  on  every  heart.  But  the  avoidance  of  evil 
is  a  lesson  for  infancy  in  moral  culture  —  goodness  for  the 
sake  of  goodness,  for  the  love  of  goodness,  that  is  the  highest 
inculcation.  Not  to  do  right  for  the  sake  of  happiness,  in 
the  usuat  low  sense  of  the  term,  but  for  the  sake  of  Right, 
is  the  true  precept.  The  whole  life,  even  of  the  humblest, 
should  be  a  spontaneous  aspiration.  Then  Goodness  is  no 
more  a  holiday  cloak,  a  Sunday  feat,  but  a  breath,  an  at 
mosphere.  No  longer  is  the  week  divided  into  six  days  for 
overreaching  our  neighbor  and  one  for  expiating  it  to  God ; 
but  the  life  becomes  integral  and  consistent,  and  the  daily 
toil  an  unmeditated  psalm. 

The  bane  of  guiltless  life  among  us  is  excessive,  perpetual 
Care.  The  eagerness  to  acquire,  the  dread  to  lose  —  the 
apprehension  of  loss  of  caste,  poverty,  want,  famine  —  these 
furrow  our  brows  prematurely  with  their  scathing  plowshares. 
The  evils  that  we  really  endure  are  less  formidable  in  amount, 
perhaps  in  intensity,  than  those  we  suffer  from  fear  alone. 
Not  merely  is  it  too  true,  that 

'  Getting  and  spending  we  lay  waste  our  years  ;' 

15* 


174  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

but  the  depressing  dread  that  we  shall  be  cut  off  from  any 
opportunity  to  acquire  and  possess — this  wears  upon  and 
crushes  us.  There  is  more  bitterness  than  levity  in  the  jest 
that  "  We  have  no  National  amusements  but  Banking  and 
the  Credit  system."  How  many  a  child  is  early  set  to  hoard 
ing  pence  in  a  box  which  takes  readily  but  returns  none  ; 
while  its  simple,  narrow-minded  parents  imagine  that  they 
have  given  it  a  noble  start  on  the  journey  of  life !  To  win 
money  and  keep  it — this  is  the  great  achievement  constantly 
held  up  before  the  eyes  of  our  infant  Alexanders  and  Caesars. 
1  Whittington  and  his  Cat'  are  more  the  objects  of  Child 
hood's  admiring  contemplation  than  an  army  of  saints  and 
martyrs.  How  shall  such  children  afterward  be  taught  to 
believe  and  realize  that  Life  has  higher  aims  than  those  of 
the  counter  and  the  market  ?  that  a  competence  is  to  be 
valued  as  enabling  to  live  truly  and  nobly,  and  as  affording 
the  means  of  diffusing  benefits  and  blessings,  while  Self- 
Culture,  the  training,  development  and  elevation  of  the 
Man,  are  the  true  ends  of  life  !  It  is  idle  to  expect,  save 
rarely,  a  result  contradictory  to  early  and  deep  impres 
sions.  Nay,  it  is  idle  to  expect  that  the  child  which  grows 
up  surrounded  and  impressed  by  many  and  painful  evidences 
of  the  privations  and  degradations,  mental  as  well  as  physi 
cal,  to  which  the  pecuniarily  destitute  are  everywhere  sub 
jected,  will  not  learn  to  prize  and  struggle  for  Wealth  as  a 
chief  good.  It  stands  before  him  the  practical  barrier  be 
tween  Liberty  and  Slavery,  Power  and  Insignificance,  self- 
respect  and  abjectness.  It  is  not  merely  a  means  of  enjoying 
and  dispensing  physical  comforts  —  it  is  the  key  to  the 
treasuries  of  Thought  and  Knowledge  —  it  is  the  power  of 
retirement  and  self-communion.  We  may  teach  Man  to  limit 
his  desires  to  the  last  degree,  yet  the  question  recurs  to 
him — "Without  Property,  how  shall  I  have  means  of  satis 
fying  the  lowest  necessities  of  physical  existence  ?  I  may 
learn  to  live  long  on  a  dollar ;  but  I  can  not  learn  to  com- 


HUMAN  LIFE.  175 

that  dollar,  unless  some  one  will  employ  me,  and  how 
shall  I  be  sure  of  that  ?  If  I  could  live  on  grass  and  water, 
there  are  those  depending  on  me  who  can  not ;  what  will 
secure  comfort  to  them  ?"  Alas,  for  this  necessity  of  con 
stant,  anxious,  earth-embracing  care  for  the  supply  of  tem 
poral  wants  !  Shall  we  never  be  able  to  obey  the  Divine 
injunction  to  '  take  no  thought  for  the  morrow'?' 

And  here  is  the  root  of  that  demand  for  a  Social  Reform 
which,  springing  up  simultaneously  in  so  many  earnest  hearts, 
is  beginning  at  length  to  make  itself  heard  and  felt.  The 
thoughtless  Million  may  scoff,  as  their  prototypes  in  all  ages 
have  scoffed,  at  ideas  which  look  beyond  the  sensual  wants 
of  the  individual  and  the  hour  ;  but  the  observing  understand 
that  these  do  not  even  comprehend  the  evil  which  is  resisted 
—  the  change  which  is  desired.  It  is  not  merely  that  the 
widow  and  the  orphan  lack  food  under  our  present  Social 
Order — it  is  not  merely  the  contemplation  of  the  yawn 
ing  abysses  of  degradation,  misery  and  crime,  into  which 
millions  after  millions  are  constantly  driven  by  our  Society's 
harsh  denial  to  them  of  any  honest  means  of  earning  their 
needful  bread  —  though  this  and  its  train  of  consequences 
are  enough  to  drown  a  nation  in  tears  of  blood  —  but  the  cry 
for  a  truer  Social  basis  has  yet  a  deeper  source  than  this. 
It  is  the  Soul's  indignant  protest  against  its  own  perpetual 
involvement  in  a  system  of  heartlessness  and  war  —  of  chaf 
fering  and  struggling  for  daily  bread,  when  its  healthful 
existence  demands  an  atmosphere  of  serenity  and  love.  It 
willingly  proffers  physical  powers  to  obtain  physical  ends  — 
the  hands  to  plant  and  to  build,  to  fashion  and  produce  ;  but 
the  surrender  of  itself  to  a  perpetual  round  of  ignoble 
anxieties  and  petty  yet  exacting  collisions,  is  felt  to  be  too 
much.  The  desolate  and  crushed  heart  that  lives  but  on  one 
cherished  though  saddening  memory,  is  willing,  nay,  eager, 
to  give  faithful  daily  labor  for  the  plainest  daily  bread  ;  it  is 
the  constant,  haunting  dread  that  even  that  hard  exchange 


176  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORM. 

will  not  long  be  attainable  —  the  exposure  to  rude  rebuffs  and 
wounding  suspicions  in  obeying  the  frequently  recurring 
necessity  to  seek  anew  the  privilege  of  giving  much  toil  for 
little  recompense — it  is  this  which  gnaws  and  kills.  It  is 
the  conviction  that  Society — that  of  Christendom  at  least  — 
ought  to  be  a  condition  not  of  war  but  of  peace — not  of 
jarring  rivalry  but  of  generous  emulation  in  good  deeds  — 
not  calculated  to  develop  and  aggravate,  but  to  chasten  and 
correct  whatever  in  man  is  selfish  and  unsympathizing — it  is 
this  which  underlies  and  impels  the  great  Social  movement, 
not  now  prominent  to  the  careless  eye,  but  which  is  destined 
to  render  our  age  memorable  in  the  history  of  Man.  Let 
those  who  think  slightingly  of  this  idea  of  a  pervading  Re 
form — a  Reform  which  shall  embosom  almost  every  other 
— ponder  the  following  words  of  a  great  man  lately  departed 
— the  philanthropic  yet  cautious,  high-souled  and  far-seeing 
Channing  :  — 

**  Our  present  civilization  is  characterised  and  tainted  by  a  devouring 
greediness  of  wealth.  The  passion  for  gain  is  everywhere  sapping 
pure,  generous  feeling,  and  raising  up  bitter  foes  against  any  reform 
which  may  threaten  to  turn  aside  the  stream  of  wealth.  I  sometimes 
feel  as  if  a  great  reform  were  necessary  to  break  up  our  present  mer 
cenary  civilization,  in  order  that  Christianity,  now  repelled  by  the  uni 
versal  worldliness,  may  come  into  nearer  contact  with  the  soul,  and  re 
construct  Society  after  its  own  pure  and  disinterested  principles." 

Such  thoughts  as  these  are  already  familiar  to  many  gen 
erous  hearts,  and  the  number  is  daily  increasing.  Let  us 
not  fear  that  they  will  long  remain  unacted. 

Let  none  accuse  me  of  the  enthusiast's  common  error — 
the  presumption  that  the  world  is  to  be  transformed  in  a  day. 
I  know  well  how  great  the  interval  which  ever  divides  the 
perception  of  a  noble  idea  by  a  few  earnest  minds  from 
its  hearty  acceptance,  its  practical  realization,  by  the  great 
mass  of  mankind.  I  know  how  any  such  idea  must  ever 
suffer  from  the  errors  or  imperfections  of  its  apostles,  from 
the  faithlessness  of  the  selfish  and  undiscerning,  from  its 


HUMAN  LIFE.  177 

perversion  and  corruption  by  many  on  whom  it  makes  an  im 
pression.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  I  will  not  close  my  eyes 
to  the  decided  progress  which  Society  has  made  during  the 
last  two  centuries,  nor  to  the  direction  of  that  progress. 
When  I  perceive  that  UNITY  OF  EFFORT,  resting  on  com 
munity  of  interest,  has  checkered  Christendom  with  roads, 
bridges,  canals,  railroads,  and  before  unimagined  facilities 
for  the  interchange  of  products  and  of  thought ;  when  I  see 
Universal  Education,  so  recently  regarded  as  a  benevolent 
chimera,  now  admitted  in  theory  to  be  essential  and  attain 
able,  though  but  distantly  approached  in  practice ;  when  I 
find  the  right  of  the  destitute  to  a  support  at  the  public  expense 
admitted  and  acted  upon  —  blindly,  imperfectly,  if  you  please, 
but  still  at  so  serious  a  cost  and  with  such  a  uniformity  both 
in  time  and  space  as  to  forbid  the  idea  that  it  rests  on  any 
other  foundation  than  that  of  acknowledged  and  imperative 
duty ;  when  I  consider  that  so  few  generations  have  passed 
since  the  ignorant  and  the  destitute  were  left  to  live  in  dark 
ness  and  die  by  unheeded  famine,  no  man  questioning  its 
rightfulness,  and  the  learned,  the  affluent,  the  noble  blas 
phemously  pronouncing  all  this  the  order  of  Providence !  — I 
will  not  doubt  that  all  these  meliorations  of  the  hard  lot  of 
the  unfortunate  are  but  slight  precursors  of  the  vast  Reform 
which  is  yet  to  embosom  all  other  reforms  —  which  is  to  se 
cure  Education  and  Bread  even  to  the  deepest  poverty  and 
darkest  misfortune,  by  simply  making  the  sinews,  the  exer 
tions,  of  any  intelligent  child  of  Adam  worth  the  cost  of  his 
instruction  and  subsistence — which  shall  replace  all  our  mis 
erable  and  too  often  pernicious  public  and  private  alms  to 
the  vigorous,  by  a  system  of  undegrading  and  self-sustaining 
General  Industry,  in  which  a  place  shall  be  open  to  every 
one  who  needs  or  asks  it. 

Happy  he  who  shall  be  enabled  to  show  forth  in  his  own 
what  human  life  should  be,  unpolluted  by  evil  passions,  un- 
corroded  by  sordid  cares,  unchafed  by  the  disappointment  of 


178  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

selfish  aspirations,  ever  shielded  from  the  access  of  tempta 
tion  and  error  by  finding  delight  in  duty,  and  a  tranquil  joy 
in  the  widest  diffusion  of  blessings.  Happy  beyond  the 
power  of  evil  destiny  shall  he  be  whose  life  flows  on  in  one 
calm,  full  current  of  active  goodness  —  of  unceasing  benevo 
lence  to  Man,  of  unbounded  reliance  on  God.  Looking  back 
in  the  evening  of  his  days  through  the  dissolving  mists  of 
the  past,  he  shall  discern  in  every  trial,  Discipline ;  in  every 
sorrow,  the  salutary  chastening  of  a  Divine  beneficence. 
And  when  the  bowed  fra'me  and  feeble  limbs  shall  admonish 
him  of  failing  power  to  execute  the  dictates  of  a  still  loving 
heart,  he  shall  need  no  farther  witness  of  the  benignity  of 
that  dispensation  which  Sin  recoils  from  as  Death,  but,  pil 
lowed  on  that  blessed  Book,  whose  promises  have  lighted 
the  dim  pathway  to  millions,  shall  sleep  to  be  awakened  in 
Heaven. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  179 


VI. 
THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR : 

A     LECTURE.* 

WE  are  in  the  depth  of  Winter.  Around  us  lie  strewed 
the  lifeless,  decaying  wrecks  of  a  world  of  verdure,  growth, 
and  beauty,  which  has  perished  forever.  Before  us  stretches 
a  bleak,  rugged  prospect  of  ice  and  snow,  of  keen  north 
western  blasts  and  raw  north-eastern  storms,  rattling  the  bare 
boughs  of  a  hemisphere  of  orchard,  grove,  and  forest.  All 
seems  stern,  joyless,  transfixed,  congealed  as  by  the  frost  of 
Death. 

Not  so,  however.  The  searching  eye,  impelled  by  the 
loving,  trusting  heart,  discerns  on  these  naked  boughs  the 
modest  shrinking  buds  which  bespeak  the  corning  Spring  — 
and  the  precursors  of  the  abundant  foliage  and  gladness  of 
the  approaching  Summer.  The  pall  of  the  Present  shields 
while  it  shrouds  the  roses  of  the  Future.  Nature,  so  torpid, 
and  dead  to  the  dull,  material  eye,  is  even  now  in  her  pro 
found  laboratories  preparing  for  her  coming  season  of  visible, 
palpable  glory.  Her  night  of  wintry  darkness  heralds  a  rosy, 
genial  dawn. 

Thus  also  in  the  Moral  and  in  the  Social  world. 

For  generations  the  old  Social  Machinery  has  been  wear 
ing  out  —  giving  way  —  breaking  down.  The  original 
division  of  our  Race  into  a  Free  class  of  Warriors  and 

*  In  part.     The  concluding  pages  as  here  published  are  quite  different  from  the 
Lecture  as  read,  under  another  title. 


186  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Rulers  and  a  Slave  caste  of  Laborers  and  Cultivators  is  with 
difficulty  and  but  partially  maintained.  With  the  change  of 
circumstances  and  of  aspirations,  the  trade  of  War  has  fallen 
into  comparative  disuse  and  disrepute,  and  the  governing 
class  seek  distinction  and  advantage  on  other  fields  than  those 
of  battle.  The  chiefs  advance  to  the  conflict  in  mail  and 
hemlet  as  of  old,  while  the  undistinguished  multitude  still 
fight  and  fall  in  relative  nakedness ;  but  the  armor  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century  is  a  plethoric  pocket-book  ;  its  strong 
fortress  is  a  fire-proof  vault,  well  filled  with  notes,  mortgages, 
and  title-deeds.  Ancient  Chivalry  wasted  ten  years,  with 
countless  lives  and  treasure,  in  burning  one  Troy ;  its 
modern  counterpart  builds  half  a  dozen  Lowells  and  Man- 
chesters  in  a  like  period,  and  at  a  cost  and  risk  immeasurably 
less.  The  '  king  of  men'  of  to-day,  to  whom  honors  and 
public  trusts  are  tendered  as  of  right,  after  whom  new  cities 
are  named,  is  a  Factory  Agent  and  Railroad  Director  ;  a 
Cotton-spinner  overturns  the  long-cherished  policy  of  Great 
Britain  ;  a  cotton-spinner's  son  is  the  most  eminent  civilian 
of  that  mighty  realm.  Not  to  ravage  and  trample  down  but 
to  cherish,  upbuild  and  direct  is  the  wiser  impulse  of  the 
powerful  of  our  day  with  respect  to  the  operations  and  the 
results  of  Productive  Industry.  Very  naturally,  the  progress 
and  the  efficiency  of  Useful  Labor  shame  all  recorded 
precedent. 

But  here,  on  the  threshold  of  our  survey,  a  painful  fact 
confronts  and  startles  us.  Human  Labor  is  efficient  beyojid 
example,  but  the  Labori?ig  Class  is  hardly  benefited  thereby. 
Houses  multiply  with  extreme  rapidity,  but  the  number  of 
the  houseless  is  not  diminished.  The  prolific  Earth  yields 
larger  and  larger  harvests  as  wilds  are  reclaimed  and  Science 
is  applied  to  Agriculture,  but  millions  pine  and  thousands 
starve  for  lack  of  food.  Our  roads  and  means  of  transit  are 
visibly  improved  from  season  to  season  ;  but  our  road- 
makers  are  no  better  circumstanced  than  their  grandfathers 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  181 

were.  Each  year  sees  the  number  and  value  of  arable 
acres  increase,  while  the  proportion  of  those  who  possess 
any  land  in  their  own  right  steadily  diminishes.  Each  year 
produces  more  and  more  fuel  and  cloth,  yet  witnesses 
more  and  more  shivering  and  nakedness.  While  new 
inventions  and  processes  are  daily  rendering  material  life 
more  smooth  and  comfortable  to  the  affluent,  the  number  of 
the  destitute,  squalid  and  miserable  is  steadily  on  the  in 
crease.  With  an  immensely  extended  and  widening  de 
mand  on  every  side  for  Labor,  to  clear  lands,  blast  rocks, 
construct  houses,  factories,  dams,  and  Railroads,  to  dig 
Canals,  drains,  &c.,  &c.,  there  is  a  large  and  increasing  host 
of  unemployed  laborers,  standing  idle  and  gaunt  in  the 
market-place,  anxious  to  work  that  their  little  ones  may 
not  famish,  and  in  danger  of  sinking  into  dissipation  and 
crime  through  despair.  '  Men  and  brethren,  what  shall 
we  do  T 

That  wealth  and  penury  advance  hand  in  hand,  that  the 
stately,  sumptuous  mansion  implies  the  lowly,  desolate  hovel, 
was  long  ago  noted.  The  mansion  may  rise  in  London  or 
Paris,  while  the  hovel  covers  in  Irish  Skibbereen  or  the 
Scotch  Highlands  :  the  distance  of  location  does  not  break 
and  should  not  conceal  the  chain  of  cause  and  effect  by 
which  the  palace  and  the  hovel  are  united.  We  may  re 
hearse  the  babble  of  the  accredited  Political  Economists  till 
our  own  brains  are  addled  and  our  eyes  benighted,  and  still 
the  fact  remains  that  so  long  as  one  man  shall  be  authorized 
to  draw  an  income  of,  say  $100,000  per  annum,  from  the 
cultivators  of  a  township  or  County  for  the  use  of  the  naked 
earth  they  stand  on,  to  be  increased  as  Power  shall  dictate 
and  Need  perforce  assent,  so  long  must  the  reward  of  the 
Labor  expended  thereon  be  meager  and  its  subsistence 
scanty  and  precarious ;  and  so  long  as  the  maxim  is  accred 
ited  and  acted  on  that  the  powerful  and  the  shrewd  have  a 
clear  moral  right  to  use  their  natural  advantages  with  a  single 
16 


182  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

view  to  their  own  gratification  and  aggrandizement,  so  long 
must  the  weak  and  lowly  be  crushed  and  trampled  on. 

Of  the  tendencies  and  goal  of  the  existing  Social  system, 
with  its  legalization  of  Land  Monopoly  and  cardinal  maxim 
of  '  Every  man  for  himself,'  Ireland  affords  at  this  day  the 
most  eminent  and  striking  example.  There  the  soil  is  by 
law  the  property  of  the  few,  while  the  population  is  dense  and 
relies  mainly  on  Agriculture  for  subsistence.  Vast  estates 
and  petty  holdings  are  its  main  characteristics  —  estates 
whose  incomes  are  squandered  in  luxurious  dissipation  from 
Dublin  to  Venice  —  holdings  which  it  would  seem  scarcely 
possible  to  draw  a  family's  subsistence  from  if  the  landlord's 
tax  on  God's  naked  bounty  were  a  thing  unknown.  Yet 
from  these  mere  patches  of  soil,  varying  from  a  rood  to  an 
acre  in  area,  rents  of  five  and  twenty  dollars  per  acre  are 
extorted.  And  still  men  wonder  that  Ireland  is  so  scourged 
and  famine-stricken  ! — wonder  that  her  common  people  are 
so  ignorant  and  wretched !  Is  it  not  the  real  marvel  that 
they  have  so  long  endured  and  survived  their  wrongs  and 
oppressions  ? 

Nor  ought  we  to  regret  that  the  evil,  so  long  brooding, 
has  reached  its  crisis  before  our  eyes — that  the  clouds  so 
long  gathering,  lowering,  muttering,  have  been  rent  by  the  ar 
tillery  of  Heaven  and  are  discharging  their  furies.  Whoever 
has  thoughtfully  studied  our  prevailing  maxims  of  Social 
Polity,  and  clearly  apprehends  their  radical  vices,  must  real 
ize  that  the  visitations  of  Famine  in  our  day  are  no  less 
obviously  judgments  than  mercies.  For,  as  says  the  keen- 
sighted  though  erratic  Carlyle : 

"  Great  is  Bankruptcy  :  the  bottomless  gulf  into  which  all  False 
hoods,  public  and  private,  do  sink,  disappearing ;  whither,  from  the 
first  origin  of  them,  they  were  all  doomed.  For  nature  is  true,  and 
not  a  lie.  No  lie  you  can  speak  or  act,  but  it  will  come,  after  longer 
or  shorte'r  circulation,  like  a  Bill,  drawn  on  Nature's  reality,  and  be 
presented  there  for  payment — with  the  answer,  No  Effects.  Pity 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  183 

only  that  it  often  had  so  long  a  circulation  :  that  the  original  forger 
were  so  seldom  he  who  bore  the  final  smart  of  it !  Lies,  and  the  bur 
den  of  evil  they  bring,  are  passed  on ;  shifted  from  back  to  back,  and 
from  rank  to  rank ;  and  so  land  ultimately  on  the  dumb  lowest  rank, 
who,  with  spade  and  mattock,  with  sore  heart  and  empty  wallet,  daily 
come  in  contact  with  reality,  and  can  pass  the  cheat  no  farther.  *  *  * 
"With  a  Fortunatus'  Purse  in  its  pocket,  through  what  length  of 
time  might  not  almost  any  Falsehood  last !  Your  Society,  your 
Household,  practical  or  spiritual  Arrangement,  is  untrue,  unjust, 
offensive  to  the  eye  of  God  and  man.  Nevertheless,  its  hearth  is 
warm,  its  larder  well  replenished  ;  the  innumerable  Swiss  of  Heav 
en,  with  a  kind  of  natural  loyalty,  gather  round  it;  will  prove, 
by  pamphleteering,  musketeering,  that  it  is  a  Truth ;  or,  if  not  an  un 
mixed  (unearthly,  impossible)  Truth  —  then  better;  a  wholesomely 
attempered  one  (as  the  wind  is  to  the  shorn  lamb,)  and  works  well. 
Changed  outlook,  however,  when  purse  and  larder  grow  empty ! 
Was  your  arrangement  so  true,  so  accordant  to  Nature's  ways,  then 
how,  in  the  name  of  wonder,  has  Nature,  with  her  infinite  bounty, 
come  to  leave  it  famishing  there  ?  To  all  men,  to  all  women  and 
children,  it  is  now  indubitable  that  your  Arrangement  was  false. 
Honor  to  Bankruptcy  !  Under  all  Falsehoods  it  works,  unweariedly 
mining.  No  Falsehood,  did  it  rise  Heaven  high  and  cover  the  world, 
but  Bankruptcy,  one  day,  will  sweep  it  down,  and  make  us  free 
of  it/' 

—  'Ah!  we  know!'  says  the  thoughtless  conservative, 
'  that  there  is  a  bad  state  of  things  in  Ireland  ;  but  wrhat  has 
that  to  do  with  us  ?  You  don't  mean  to  say  that  we  are  in 
any  such  condition  ?' 

Why,  sir,  do  you  realize  that  the  anti-reformer  in  Ireland 
is  just  as  oblivious  to  the  existence  or  the  curability  of  evils 
there  as  you  are  as  to  those  which  cluster  or  lower  here  ? 
Of  course,  he  does  not  wish  to  deny  that  evils  exist ;  he 
readily  admits  that,  and  contends  it  is  divinely  ordained  that 
so  it  should  be.  He  seeks  not  to  deny  that  whole  neighbor 
hoods  are  famishing  ; — but  what  of  it?  Did  not  CHRIST 
say,  '  The  poor  ye  have  always  with  you  ?'  And  who 
should  seek  to  falsify  the  Savior's  prediction  ?  Starvation 
and  wretchedness  are  by  Heavenly  appointment  —  sent  to 


184  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

discipline  portly,  well-to-do  Christians  in  the  exercise  of 
Charity.  Thus  the  Poor  famish,  but  that  only  proves  the 
extent  of  Human  perversity,  the  desperate  viciousness  and 
depravity  of  the  lower  class,  or  the  fierceness  of  the  Divine 
wrath  against  Sin  ;  and  Society  stands  acquitted  of  injustice 
or  even  improvidence.  When  some  poor  peasant,  living 
with  his  pigs  and  children  in  a  mud-hovel  unfit  for  the 
habitation  of  brutes,  driven  to  despair  by  the  impossibility  of 
subsisting  his  family,  and  paying  some  dollars'  rent  for  a 
scanty  half  acre  of  soil,  falls  into  habits  of  intemperance,  and 
is  ejected  for  non-payment  of  rent,  his  fault  is  exaggerated 
and  his  calamity  deemed  a  righteous  retribution  ;  while  his 
landlord,  who  idly  enjoys  and  uselessly  expends  an  income 
of  $50,000  or  more,  racked  from  just  such  half-acres  and 
hovels,  walks  the  earth  an  honored,  smiling,  self-satisfied, 
Christian  gentleman,  the  pride  of  the  County  and  the  idol 
of  those  he  honors  with  his  intimacy  ;  and  when  at  a  ripe 
age  he  is  gathered  to  his  fathers,  florid  sermons  are  preached 
in  commendation  of  his  exemplary  life  and  in  glorification 
of  the  munificent  charity  with  which  he  gave  back  to  plun 
dered  Poverty  a  hundredth  part  of  what  he  took  from  it.  So 
wags,  not  Ireland  merely,  but  the  world. 

Yes,  my  Conservative  friend  !  not  in  Ireland  only,  nor  in 
Europe,  nor  in  the  Old  World,  are  there  grievous  Social 
wrongs  to  redress,  but  here  and  everywhere.  Man  deals 
hardly  with  his  brother  —  the  rich  with  the  poor,  the  strong 
with  the  weak,  the  landed  with  the  landless.  The  base  of 
our  Social  Edifice  is  not  Justice,  but  Power — the  right  of 
the  strongest  to  use  his  strength,  not  to  upraise  but  to  depress 
his  brother,  if  he  can  seemingly  profit  thereby.  Let  a  con 
flagration  or  an  earthquake  add  some  thousands  to  the  num 
ber  of  those  who  must  hire  houses,  and  what  Christian  land 
lord  hesitates  to  increase  his  rents  ?  although  he  well  knows 
that  neither  his  outlay  nor  the  ability  of  the  tenants  is 
increased  an  atom.  Let  bread  become  scarce,  and  what 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  185 

Christian  merchant,  what  affluent  farmer,  hesitates  to  ad 
vance  the  price  of  Grain,  though  the  wail  of  the  famished 
is  ringing  in  his  ears  ?  Do  we  not  know  that  the  morality, 
and  even  the  humanity,  of  so  doing  has,  after  a  fashion, 
been  demonstrated,  and  forms  one  of  the  corner-stones  of 
the  temple  of  modern  Political  Economy  ?  And,  the  premises 
being  granted,  the  conclusion  is  irresistible.  The  objection 
applies  not  to  the  stone  but  to  the  temple.  Grant  that  the 
earth  has  been  wisely  and  justly  allotted  to,  or  permitted  to 
become,  the  property  of  the  few  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
many,  and  that  every  person  has  a  right  to  use  his  strength, 
his  skill,  or  his  wit,  expressly  and  primarily  for  individual 
gain  or  advantage,  all  we  see  and  feel  follows  of  course.  The 
wrong  lies  at  the  very  foundation  of  our  Social  Order,  or 
there  is  no  wrong  at  all. 

But  I  have  premised  generally  that  our  Society  is  unjust : 
let  me  briefly  indicate  in  what  respects  and  particular. 

When  a  young  man,  having  devoted  the  better  portion  of 
his  minority  to  the  acquirement  of  some  useful  trade  or 
handicraft,  finds  himself  of  age  and  an  adept  in  his  vocation, 
yet  unable  to  obtain  employment  in  his  calling  and  unfitted 
to  earn  a  livelihood  out  of  it  —  denied  even  an  acre  of  bare 
earth  on  which  to  earn  it — there  is  an  instance  of  Social 
defect  or  injustice. 

When  a  poor  laborer,  delving  in  weariness  from  day  to 
day,  finds  a  promising  family  growing  up  around  him  whom 
he  can  not  lodge  decently,  clothe  comfortably  nor  educate 
thoroughly,  but  is  compelled  to  dismiss  his  sons  to  the 
temptations  and  corruptions  of  the  street,  while  he  is  off 
through  the  day  earning  their  scanty  subsistence — 'there  is 
another  whom  Society  treats  unjustly. 

When  a  poor  youth,  who  has  devoted  every  hour  of  his 

time,   every  farthing  of  his   means,  to  the  acquirement  of 

what  is  called  a  Liberal  Education,  finds  himself  afloat  on 

the  great  sea  without  a  haven  before  him  —  no  call  for  him 

16* 


186  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

in  any  professional  capacity,  no  influential  friends  to  make 
a  position  —  no  fitness,  but  rather  decided  unfitness,  for  use 
fulness  in  any  mechanical  vocation  —  and  has  the  simple 
choice  afforded  him,  to  beg,  starve,  or  turn  his  acquirements 
to  some  gainful  but  infamous  use  —  there  is  another  victim 
of  Social  injustice. 

When  a  poor  man,  after  drudging  steadily  at  day-labor 
through  the  warmer  season,  finds  himself  at  winter  thrown 
out  of  employment,  with  a  family  that  must  be  fed,  a  rent 
that  must  be  paid,  and  yet  no  means  afforded  him  of  doing 
either  —  no  reliable  barrier  against  starvation  but  the  Poor- 
House — there  is  another  whom  Society  is  wronging  and 
tempting  to  wrong. 

Still  more,  when  a  poor  widow,  her  earthly  reliance  and 
solace  lately  snatched  away  by  death,  finds  herself  driven  by  ne 
cessity  into  some  miserable  garret,  there  to  keep  the  breath  of 
life  in  her  shivering  children  from  the  earnings  of  her  needle 
—  at  best  hardly  twenty-five  cents  a  day,  however  long  that 
day  may  be  made  —  from  which  the  food,  clothing,  rent  and 
fuel  of  that  desolate  family  are  somehow  to  be  extracted  — 
there  is  not  merely  grievous  suffering  but  flagrant  wrong, 
at  which  angels  might  weep  tears  of  indignant  commiseration. 

Worse  still  is  the  case  of  the  young  maiden  doomed  to 
poverty  and  deficient  training  in  one  of  our  great  cities, 
thrown  early  on  her  own  guidance  and  exertions,  impelled 
to  earn  a  livelihood  by  sewing,  bookfolding,  or  any  of  the 
principal  avocations  of  women  which  at  best  affords  a  bare 
subsistence  —  cursed  with  '  the  fatal  gift  of  Beauty,'  and  with 
the  necessity  of  constantly  exposing  herself,  in  the  pursuit 
of  her  humble  calling,  to  contact  with  all  that  is  corrupt  and 
licentious,  and  at  length  thrown  out  of  employment  by  the 
paralyzing  touch  of  Winter,  with  black  Necessity  drifting 
her  to  swift  Despair,  while  Infamy  eagerly  proffers  a  life  of 
dazzling  Luxury  and  Ease  in  exchange  for,  at  best,  one  of 
Poverty  and  Toil.  That  the  exchange  is  oftener  spurned 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  187 

with  horror  than  accepted  is  honorable  to  Human  Nature  ; 
but  it  is  not  always  spurned,  as  the  streets  and  alleys  of  our 
great  cities  mournfully  attest.  Accursed  be  the  necessity 
which  thus  tramples  down  Virtue  !  detested  be  the  Social 
Injustice  in  which  originated  the  necessity  ! 

And  yet  I  have  heard  of  such  a  mockery  of  Heaven  as  a 
clergymen  rising  before  a  wealthy  and  fashionable  congrega 
tion  on  a  Thanksgiving-Day  to  express  gratitude  that,  in 
this  favored  land,  every  one  who  chooses  may  earn  a  comfort- 
able  subsistence  !  What  could  the  man  have  meant  ?  Where 
were  his  eyes  ?  He  might  as  well  have  given  thanks  that 
no  person  ever  dies  here  except  by  his  own  hand.  I  can 
testify  from  personal  experience  that  there  is  not  always  work 
even  for  the  skilful  who  diligently  seek  it ;  much  less  is 
there  for  the  unskilled  and  the  simple.  That  Industry, 
Energy,  Skill  and  Probity  will  eventually  lead  to  Compe 
tence  and  Respect,  may  be  affirmed  without  dispute,  but  to 
what  purpose  ?  The  vital  question  remains  :  How  shall  the 
landless  and  virtually  homeless  evince  these  valuable  capaci 
ties  and  thereby  secure  immediate  Employment  and  ultimate 
Competence  ?  How  shall  they  live  while  they  are  waiting 
the  moving  of  the  waters  ?  '  It  is  the  first  step  that  costs  !' 
It  is  OPPORTUNITY  to  exhibit  the  desirable  qualities  and 
command  a  just  recompense  that  I  plead  for  as  the  natural 
right  of  all  men  ;  and  that  this  is  not  now  secured  is  the 
condemnation  of  our  existing  Social  Order. 

We,  then,  who  st$nd  for  a  comprehensive  and  all-pervading 
Reform  in  the  Social  relations  of  mankind,  impeach  the 
present  Order  as  defective  and  radically  vicious  in  the  fol 
lowing  important  particulars  : 

1.  It  does  not  provide  for  the  Physical,  Moral  and  Intel 
lectual  training  of  the  Young,  but  leaves  all  to  the  accident 
of  parental  ability  and  wisdom  to  nurture  and  instruct.  But 
in  most  instances  the  father,  and  in  many  the  mother  also, 
is  forced  by  the  stern  necessity  of  laboring  for  bread  where 


188  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Labor  can  be  obtained,  to  leave  the  children  to  the  training 
of  the  street — that  is,  to  the  training  of  the  most  corrupt  and 
worthless  portion  of  the  community.  The  little  ones  can 
not  be  tolerated  in  the  factory,  the  foundry,  nor  even  the 
grain-field,  until  they  are  fitted  for  useful  toil  therein  ;  and 
the  inevitable  consequence,  as  to  the  most  destitute  and  en 
dangered,  is  the  formation  of  habits  of  idleness,  profanity 
and  vice,  and  the  utter  waste  of  some  of  the  most  precious 
years  of  life. 

2.  It  does  not  secure  Opportunity  to  Labor,  nor  to  acquire 
Industrial  skill  and  efficiency,  to  those  who  most  need  both. 
It  is  a  clear  general  truth  that,  in  the  world  as  we  find  it, 
the  man  who  has  the  means  of  living  for  a  time  without  labor 
need  never  stand  idle  ;  nor   need   he  whose  Industrial   ac 
quirements  enable  him  to  earn  in  one  month  the  recompense 
of  several  months'  merely  physical  toil.     But  he  who  is  to 
day  without  property  and  employment  has  but  his  chance 
among  many  others  of  finding  something  to  do ;  and  if  he  is 
at  the  same  time  unskilled  for  any  but  the  rudest  labor,  his 
chance  is  by  far  the  slenderer.     Let  him  be  infirm,  or  crip 
pled,  or  by  any  means  reduced  below  the  medium  standard 
of  Industrial  capacity,  and  his  chance  of  finding  employment 
is  still  more  meager  and  doubtful.     Thus  Society,  in  strict 
obedience  to  its  fundamental  law,  '  Look  out  for  No.  1,'  has 
established  a  sliding  scale    of  opportunity,  whereby  every 
one's  chance  of  finding  work  is  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  neces 
sity  of  his  obtaining  it ;  and  he  who  co^uld  hardly  earn  a 
poor  subsistence  if  constantly  employed   and  fairly  remu 
nerated,  is  morally  certain  to  be  more  frequently  idle   and 
more  scantily  paid  than  anybody  else. 

3.  We  impeach  our  existing  Society  that  it  dooms  the 
most  indigent  class  to   pay  for  whatever  of  comforts  and 
necessaries  they  may  enjoy  —  Food,  Fuel,  Shelter,  &c. — 
at  a  higher  rate  comparatively  than  is  exacted  of  the  more 
affluent  classes.     The  man  who  must  buy  as  he  needs,  both 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  189 

in  time  and  quantity,  always  pays  more  than  he  who  buys  as 
he  chooses.  On  this  point  no  argument  is  necessary;  but  I 
apprehend  that  the  extent  of  the  injustice  thus  inflicted  is 
very  rarely  considered  and  appreciated. 

4.  For  the  Physical  evils  it  inflicts  and  renders  inevitable, 
Society  has  barely  two  palliatives  —  Private  Alms-giving  and 
the  Poor-House.  But  neither  of  these  is  curative  in  its  na 
ture  ;  indeed,  each  is  plainly  calculated  to  render  the  evils 
its  combats  chronic  and  enduring.  No  man,  I  apprehend, 
was  ever  cured  of  Pauperism  by  the  Aims-House  ;  on  the 
contrary,  few  have  submitted  to  its  conscious  degradation 
and  retained  the  moral  power  to  struggle  for  and  regain  their 
independence.  Over  the  entrance  to  this  Hospital  of  Civil- 
zation  might  fitly  be  inscribed  the  warning  which  Dante 
places  over  the  gate  of  the  Infernal  Regions : 

'  All  hope  abandon,  ye  who  enter  here:' 

For  the  man  who  enters  the  Aims-House  as  a  pauper  con 
fesses  that  he  has  been  utterly  defeated  in  the  grand  battle  of 
life  and  has  surrendered  at  discretion  ;  and  he  will  hardly 
have  the  spirit,  with  his  sanguine  expectations  disappointed, 
his  hopes  blasted,  his  means  dissipated  and  his  energies 
broken,  to  rally  and  renew  determinedly  the  combat.  To 
all  practical  intents,  he  is  henceforth  merely  a  clog  and  a 
burden.  It  is  a  little  better,  and  but  a  little,  with  him  who 
is  reduced  to  receive  assistance  from  friends  or  others  with 
out  expecting  ever  to  repay  it.  He  may  struggle  on,  in  a 
dying  way,  for  years ;  but  each  recurrence  of  the  necessity 
and  the  bounty  debases  his  spirit,  relaxes  his  energies,  and 
floats  him  nearer  and  nearer  the  abyss  of  utter  abasement 
and  listless  despair. 

Now  what  is  proposed  by  Social  Reformers,  regarded 
merely  in  its  Physical  and  Economical  aspects,  is  the  cor 
rection  of  these  mistakes  and  the  removal  of  their  evil  con 
sequences.  We  contend  that  in  a  civilized,  Christian  land, 


190  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

where  the  great  Law  of  Love  is  professedly  regarded  as 
paramount,  there  is  flagrant  inconsistency,  palpable  injus 
tice  and  prodigal  waste,  in  allowing  a  family  to  grow  up  in 
ignorance  or  pine  in  want  merely  because  no  individual 
chooses  or  has  occasion  to  employ  the  head  of  that  family. 
We  believe  that  the  education  and  comfort  of  that  family, 
the  steady  employment  of  its  able  and  willing  members,  are 
matters  not  merely  of  individual  but  of  general  concern,  and 
that  the  Community,  which  is  under  obligation  to  maintain 
its  bankrupt  members,  not  only  ought  but  ultimately  must, 
in  the  exercise  of  a  reasonable  forecast,  to  say  nothing  of 
humanity,  take  as  much  care  and  incur  as  much  expense  to 
save  its  feebler  members  from  becoming  paupers  as  it  now 
does  to  support  them  in  a  state  of  pauperism.  We  believe 
that  every  human  being,  except  the  infantile,  superannuated, 
brainless  and  crippled,  is  clearly  worth  at  least  the  cost  of 
his  decent  maintenance,  and  that,  whenever  Society  shall  be 
thoroughly  just,  it  will  have  far  less  occasion  to  be  charitable. 
We  believe  that  with  more  wise  Prevention  there  may  be 
less  severe  Punishment, — with  better  Schooling  there  need 
be  less  Hanging  —  and  that  one-half  the  money  now  expend 
ed  on  Aims-Houses,  Prisons,  Criminal  Processes  and  Pen 
alties,  would,  under  wise  direction,  do  away  the  necessity 
for  nine-tenths  of  the  burdens  which  Crime  and  Pauperism 
now  impose  on  the  community.  Such  is  our  faith :  years 
must  elapse  before  its  soundness  can  be  thoroughly  tested, 
but  we  are  not  the  less  resolved  to  struggle  for  it  patiently  to 
the  end. 

Enough  of  the  evil  for  the  present  occasion ;  let  us  next 
briefly  consider  what  hints  are  afforded  us,  by  Nature,  by 
Reason,  by  History,  and  the  aspects  of  the  Times,  as  to 
the  appropriate  remedy. 

The  inflexible  condition  if  not  the  impelling  cause  of 
material  life  is  ORGANIZATION.  Around  the  minutest  semi- 


THE  ORGANIZATION   OF  LABOR.  191 

nal  principle  or  germ  of  vitality  matter  collects,  disposes 
itself,  attracts,  organizes,  until  the  rude  and  insignificant 
acorn  has  become  the  shapely  and  towering  oak,  a  thing  of 
infinite  uses  and  of  stern  endurance.  The  principle  of 
Organization,  of  assimilation,  once  lost,  this  storm-defying 
monarch  of  the  hills  is  helpless,  doomed,  perishing.  A 
summer  breeze  prostrates  its  unwieldy  carcass,  which  has 
become  the  unresisting  prey  of  all  the  elements  —  of  insects 
the  most  weak  and  contemptible.  Shall  we  not  profit,  mor 
ally  as  well  as  physically,  by  his  origin  and  growth,  his 
decline  and  fall? 

Man  has  organized  despotism,  carnage,  desolation,  all 
with  the  most  palpable  and  stupendous  results.  A  drilled 
and  well-appointed  regiment  of  one  thousand  is  a  full  match 
for  an  ordinary  rabble  of  ten  times  the  number.  Why  may 
not  Production  be  likewise  organized  ?  Even  in  the  midst 
of  profound  peace,  he  who  would  find  work  as  a  stabber 
and  fusileer  need  never  look  long  for  an  employer  at  any 
season,  while  his  more  peaceful  brother,  who  revolts  at  the 
trade  of  death,  and  would  gladly  be  hired  to  subdue  and 
beautify  rather  than  ravage  and  desolate  the  earth,  may 
vainly  seek  opportunity  from  door  to  door,  from  city  to  city, 
and  from  week  to  week.  Can  it  be  impossible  to  render 
work  at  all  times  accessible  to  him  also  ? 

Stand  by  one  of  our  crowded  wharves  as  a  steamboat  from 
some  other  city  approaches,  and  you  see  before  you  a  very 
fair  daguerreotype  of  Industry  in  Civilization.  Here  are  two 
hundred  passengers  seeking  their  various  destinations,  one- 
half  of  whom  will  probably  incur  the  expense  of  a  ride  ;  here 
are  carriages  enough  for  five  hundred  eagerly  awaiting  them ; 
of  which,  after  infinite  crowding,  jostling,  cheating,  lying, 
swearing,  four-fifths  must  go  away  empty  from  their  thriftless 
quest ;  while  the  residue,  after  half  an  hour's  service,  must 
each  on  the  average  spend  three  or  four  hours  in  anxious 
pursuit  of  another  customer.  Of  course,  those  who  are 


192  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

served  must  pay  thrice  the  worth  of  the  service,  while  those 
who  wait  to  serve  are  in  general  meagerly  rewarded.  The 
chaotic,  anarchical  condition  of  the  pursuit  compels  an 
abstraction  of  four  times  the  needful  amount  of  labor  and 
capital  from  the  general  aggregate  for  the  performance  of  this 
function,  which,  after  all,  is  far  less  effectively,  accommo 
datingly  performed  than  it  might  be  by  one-fourth  as  many 
coaches,  horses,  and  coachmen,  under  a  carefully  organized 
system. 

Hawthorne,  in  his  delightful  '  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse,' 
gives  a  vision  of  a  Universal  Intelligence  Office,  whereto  all 
manner  of  people  throng  from  every  quarter,  each  inquiring 
for  *  his  place'  in  the  general  distribution  of  duties  and 
functions,  and  insisting  that  that  place  be  pointed  out  and 
assigned  to  him.  A  reasonable  request,  methinks,  and  one 
which  Society  should  long  since  have  recognized  and  com 
plied  with.  As  the  world  goes,  many  doubtless  make  it  in 
envy,  pride,  petulance,  or  spleen  ;  they  would  not  now  be 
satisfied  with  such  a  place  as  they  are  entitled  to  and  fitted 
for  if  it  were  allotted  them.  They  have  hardly  been  educated 
into  fitness  for  any  position  of  essential  freedom  and  useful 
ness  ;  they  need  fitting  as  well  as  placing,  and  before  placing. 
But  visit  the  National  Metropolis  when  a  new  Congress  is 
about  to  be  organized,  or  any  State  Capital  on  like  occasion, 
and  note  the  swarms  of  place-hunters  whom  such  an  occasion 
draws  together ;  they,  too,  shall  teach  us.  Many  of  them  are- 
doubtless  seekers  for  lucrative  idleness  or  undue  recompense, 
some  for  the  imaginary  consequence  of  official  station,  how 
ever  menial,  and  of  contact  with  the  eminent  and  powerful. 
Yet  I  think  the  eagerness  wherewith  every  place,  even  to  the 
most  laborious  and  least  profitable,  is  sought  and  struggled 
for  proves  a  very  general  desire  to  be  employed  and  useful 
if  each  could  but  find  his  place  and  be  reasonably  sure  of 
preserving  and  profiting  by  it.  If  steady  employment  with 
just  recompense,  where  Labor  was  neither  unwholesome, 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  193 

uncomfortable,  nor  morally  degrading,  were  this  day  prof 
fered  for  half  a  million  persons,  of  various  ages  and  capacities, 
the  whole  number  would  gladly  step  forward  and  the 
requisition  be  promptly  filled  up,  with  no  material  and  per 
manent  abstraction  from  the  ranks  of  existing  employments. 
And  what  immense  additions  might  the  labor  of  this  Half 
Million  make  tor  the  aggregate  of  human  comforts  and  en 
joyments,  even  w'ithin  the  short  space  of  ten  years  ! 

Labor  must  be  organized.  Apart  from  all  theories 
and  projects,  this  is  inevitable.  Our  gigantic  and  ever- 
increasing  Aims-Houses,  our  cots  and  hovels  filled  with 
shivering,  famishing  inmates,  who  suffer  because  they  can 
not  find  work  ;  our  immense  stretches  of  unbroken  forest  and 
uncultivated  soil ;  our  millions  of  children  and  youth, 
growing  up  in  ignorance  and  idleness  to  lives  of  vice, 
misery,  and  crime,  all  demand  an  Organization  of  Labor 
which  shall  secure  a  place  for  every  man,  a  man  for  every 
place.  The  aggregate  waste  of  labor  and  faculty  for  want 
of  such  organization  in  any  year  excels  the  cost  of  any  war 
for  five  years  —  ruinous  and  detestable  as  all  War  is.  It  is 
palpable  fatuity,  a  criminal  waste  of  the  Divine  bounty,  to 
let  this  go  on  interminably. 

But,  assuming  that  Labor  is  to  be,  must  be  so  organized, 
as  a  matter  of  pure  Yankee  calculation  on  the  part  of  the 
landholding,  capitalist  class,  who  will  not  insist  on  maintain 
ing  a  large  and  steadily  increasing  proportion  of  the  com 
munity  in  pauperized  idleness  when  they  might  clearly  be 
enabled  and  stimulated  to  support  themselves  by  useful  in 
dustry,  it  still  remains  to  be  shown  that  a  more  intimate  Social 
relationship  is  to  accompany  or  result  from  this  Industrial 
Reform.  Dives  might  perhaps  give  Lazarus  a  steady  job 
of  oakum-picking,  or  even  gardening,  in  order  to  keep  the 
crumbs  about  his  table  for  his  dogs  exclusively,  without  at 
all  recognizing  the  essential  brotherhood  between  them  or 
doing  anything  to  vindicate  it.  Beside,  it  is  said  thai  Human 
17 


194  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Nature  stands  opposed  to  any  such  social  aggregation  as 
these  *  Fourierites'  dream  of.     Let  us  consider  this  : 

The  lowest  Savage  state  is  that  of  the  most  complete 
isolation  of  Family  efforts  and  interests.  The  savage  makes 
or  mends  a  road  or  bridge  if  he  wants  one,  but  troubles  no 
other  savage  concerning  it ;  instructs  his  children  after  his 
fashion  or  neglects  it,  but  never  concerns  himself  with  the  in 
struction  of  his  neighbors' ;  grinds  his  own  grain  as  best  he 
can,  but  never  thinks  of  uniting  with  his  tribe  to  construct  or 
sustain  a  grist-mill ;  sends  or  carries  his  message  through 
hundreds  of  miles  of  trackless  wilderness,  but  has  no  idea  of 
a  public  mail.  As  Civilization  advances,  all  this  is  changed  ; 
public  schools,  mills,  and  mails  are  but  a  part  of  the  vital 
machinery  whereby  Society  progresses  from  Barbarism  to 
Refinement,  from  poverty  and  misery  to  wealth  and  comfort. 
Even  this  is  by  no  means  the  limit  already  attained.  A  bare 
century  ago,  it  would  have  seemed  quite  incredible  that  the 
Patroon  of  Rensselaerwyck  and  the  Governor  of  New-York 
should  travel  through  the  State  in  the  same  car  with  their 
barber,  oyster-dealer,  and  shoemaker  ;  yet  they  do  it  now 
without  imagining  there  is  anything  remarkable  in  the  cir 
cumstance.  So  the  same  carriage  whirls  through  Broadway 
the  dandy,  the  banker,  the  brick-layer,  the  fine  lady,  the 
washerwoman,  and  the  milliner  :  and  no  one  is  discommoded 
nor  offended  ;  for  it  is  the  omnibus,  and  everybody  rides 
with  everybody  in  that,  without  regarding  differences  of  caste 
or  culture.  The  Omnibus  and  the  Railroad  car  are  among 
our  latest  adoptions  ;  but  who  insists  that  we  must  stop  here  ? 
These,  we  have  found,  do  not  contravene  Human  Nature : 
can  we  be  sure  that  the  Unitary  Household  must  do  so  ? 
Let  us  at  least  understand  what  it  is  before  any  settle  ob 
stinately  into  any  such  position. 

We  have  seen  that  all  the  selfishness  and  depravity  inhe 
rent  in  Human  Nature  has  not  prevented  the  gradual  substi 
tution  of  carriage-roads,  turnpikes,  canals,  steamboats  and 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  195 

railroads  for  the  footpaths  and  canoes  of  the  savage,  nor  the 
substitution  of  grist-mills  for  family  mortars,  common  schools 
and  seminaries  for  private  tutors  and  family  instructors,  the 
steamboat  and  the  rail-car  for  the  scow  and  the  palanquin  ; 
the  spacious  and  luxurious  hotel  for  the  wanderer's  tent  and 
the  oriental  serai.  This  great  change  does  not  necessarily 
involve  a  moral  regeneration,  but  simply  a  more  enlightened 
appreciation  by  each  of  his  own  interest  as  a  seeker  of  hap 
piness.  Human  depravity  is  undoubtedly  a  formidable 
impediment  to  the  perfect  realization  of  the  advantages  of 
Association  in  efforts,  interests  and  enjoyments ;  but  we  see 
that  it  has  not  prevented  progress  up  to  this  point,  and  may 
justly  conclude  that  it  can  not  absolutely  arrest  and  fix  us  at 
the  spot  we  this  moment  occupy. 

Indeed,  we  Jcnoiu  it  can  not,  from  the  testimony  of  all 
things  around  us.  On  every  side  we  are  confronted  by  evi 
dences  of  movement,  progress,  advance,  and  all  in  the  Asso 
ciative  direction.  Trades  Unions,  Protective  Unions,  Sons 
of  Temperance,  Odd-Fellowship,  Mutual  Insurance,  Life 
Insurance,  Building  and  Mutual  Benefit  Societies  of  all 
shapes  and  sizes,  attest  the  existence  of  a  principle,  an 
instinct,  a  perception,  which  is  everywhere  impelling  the 
members  of  civilized  communities  to  form  closer  and  more 
intimate  relationships  and  alliances  for  mutual  assistance  and 
protection.  Many  of  these  may  seem  narrow,  partial,  one 
sided ;  still  more  may  disclaim  affinity  with  that  universal 
reform  for  which  they  are  all  such  palpable  preparations  and 
beginnings  :  we  must  have  patience  with  all  this,  not  exact 
ing  of  the  man  who  sees  one  truth  an  immediate  and 
necessary  recognition  of  all  truth  thence  logically  flowing. 
Enough  that  we  can  see  plainly  in  these  movements,  how 
ever  limited  in  their  several  aims,  the  workings  of  a  great 
principle  which  is  destined  in  time  to  overshadow  and  ab 
sorb  them  all — the  principle  of  Social  Unity,  to  be  actual 
ized  in  Industrial  Association. 


196  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

The  first  if  not  most  important  movement  to  be  made  in 
advance  of  our  present  Social  position  is  the  ORGANIZATION 
OF  LABOR.  This  is  to  be  effected  by  degrees,  by  steps,  by 
instalments.  I  propose  here,  in  place  of  setting  forth  any 
formal  theory  or  system  of  Labor  Reform,  simply  to  narrate 
what  I  saw  and  heard  of  the  history  and  state  of  an  experi 
ment  now  in  progress  near  Cincinnati,  and  which  differs  in 
no  material  respect  from  some  dozen  or  score  of  others 
already  commenced  in  various  parts  of  the  United  States, 
not  to  speak  of  twenty  times  as  many  established  by  the 
Working  Men  of  Paris  and  other  portions  of  France. 

The  business  of  IRON-MOLDING,  Casting,  or  whatever  it 
may  be  called,  is  one  of  the  most  extensive  and  thrifty  of 
the  Manufactures  of  Cincinnati,  and  I  believe  the  labor  em 
ployed  therein  is  quite  as  well  rewarded  as  Labor  generally. 
It  is  entirely  paid  by  the  piece,  according  to  an  established 
scale  of  prices,  so  that  each  workman,  in  whatever  depart 
ment  of  the  business,  is  paid  according  to  his  individual 
skill  and  industry,  not  a  rough  average  of  what  is  supposed 
to  be  earned  by  himself  and  others,  as  is  the  case  where 
work  is  paid  for  at  so  much  per  day,  week  or  month.  I 
know  no  reason  why  the  Iron-Molders  of  Cincinnati  should 
not  have  been  as  well  satisfied  with  the  old  ways  as  anybody 
else. 

Yet  the  system  did  not  '  work  well,'  even  for  them.  Be 
yond  the  general  unsteadiness  of  demand  for  Labor  and  the 
ever-increasing  pressure  of  competition,  there  was  a  pretty 
steadily  recurring  '  dull  season,'  commencing  about  the  1st 
of  January,  when  the  Winter's  call  for  stoves,  &c.,  had  been 
supplied,  and  holding  on  for  two  or  three  months,  or  until 
the  Spring  business  opened.  In  this  hiatus,  the  prior  savings 
of  the  Molder  were  generally  consumed — sometimes  less, 
but  perhaps  oftener  more  —  so  that,  taking  one  with  another, 
they  did  not  lay  up  ten  dollars  per  annum.  By-and-by 
came  a  collision  respecting  wages  and  a  '  strike,'  wherein 


THE   ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  197 

the  Journeymen  tried  the  experiment  of  running  their  heads 
against  a  stone  wall  for  months.  How  they  came  out  of  it, 
no  matter  whether  victors  or  vanquished,  the  intelligent 
reader  will  readily  guess.  I  never  heard  of  any  evils  so 
serious  and  complicated  as  those  which  eat  out  the  heart 
of  Labor  heing  cured  by  doing  nothing. 

At  length  —  but  I  believe  after  the  strike  had  somehow 
terminated  —  some  of  the  Journeymen  Molders  said  to  each 
other  :  '  Standing  idle  is  not  the  true  cure  for  our  grievances  : 
why  not  employ  ourselves  ¥  They  finally  concluded  to  try 
it,  and,  in  the  dead  of  the  Winter  of  .1847-8,  when  a  great 
many  of  their  trade  were  out  of  employment,  the  business 
being  unusually  depressed,  they  formed  an  association  under 
the  General  Manufacturing  Law  of  Ohio  (which  is  very 
similar  to  that  of  New  York)  and  undertook  to  establish  the 
JOURNEYMEN  MOLDERS'  UNION  FOUNDRY.  There  were 
about  twenty  of  them  who  put  their  hands  to  the  work,  and 
the  whole  amount  of  capital  they  could  scrape  together  was 
two  thousand  one  hundred  dollars,  held  in  shares  of  twenty- 
five  dollars  each.  With  this  they  purchased  an  eligible 
piece  of  ground,  directly  on  the  bank  of  the  Ohio,  eight 
miles  below  Cincinnati,  with  which  '  the  Whitewater  Canal' 
also  affords  the  means  of  ready  and  cheap  communication. 
With  their  capital,  they  bought  some  patterns,  flasks,  an 
engine  and  tools,  paid  for  their  ground  and  five  hundred 
dollars  on  their  first  building,  which  was  erected  for  them 
partly  on  long  credit  by  a  firm  in  Cincinnati,  who  knew  that 
the  property  was  a  perfect  security  for  so  much  of  its  cost, 
and  decline  taking  credit  for  any  benevolence  in  the  matter. 
Their  Iron,  Coal,  &cw  to  commence  upon  were  entirely  and 
necessarily  bought  on  credit. 

Having  elected  Directors,  a  Foreman  and  a  Business 
Agent  (the  last  to  open  a  store  in  Cincinnati,  buy  stock,  sell 
wares,  &c.)  the  Journeymen's  Union  set  to  work,  in  August, 
18* 


198  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

1848.  Its  accommodations  were  then  meager ;  they  have 
since  been  gradually  enlarged  by  additions,  until  their 
Foundry  is  now  the  most  commodious  on  the  River.  Their 
stock  of  Patterns,  Flasks,  &c.,  has  grown  to  be  one  of  the 
best ;  while  their  arrangements  for  unloading  coal  and  iron, 
sending  off  stoves,  coking  coal,  &c.  &c.  are  almost  perfect. 
They  commenced  with  ten  associates  actually  at  work  ;  the 
number  has  gradually  grown  to  forty ;  and  there  is  not  a  bet 
ter  set  of  workmen  in  any  foundry  in  America.  I  profess 
to  know  a  little  as  to  the  quality  of  castings,  and  there  are 
no  better  than  may  be  seen  in  the  Foundry  of  *  Industry' 
and  its  store  at  Cincinnati.  And  there  is  obvious  reason  for 
this  in  the  fact  that  every  workman  is  a  proprietor  in  the 
concern,  and  it  is  his  interest  to  turn  out  not  only  his  own 
work  in  the  best  order,  but  to  take  care  that  all  the  rest  is  of 
like  quality.  All  is  carefully  examined  before  it  is  sent 
away,  and  any  found  imperfect  is  condemned,  the  loss  fall 
ing  on  the  causer  of  it.  But  there  is  seldom  any  deserving 
condemnation. 

A  strict  account  is  kept  with  every  member,  who  is  cred 
ited  for  all  he  does  according  to  the  Cincinnati  Scale  of 
Prices,  paid  so  much  as  he  needs  of  his  earnings  in  money, 
the  balance  being  devoted  to  the  extension  of  the  concern 
and  the  payment  of  its  debts,  and  new  stock  issued  to  him 
therefor.  Whenever  the  debts  shall  have  been  paid  off,  and 
an  adequate  supply  of  implements,  teams,  stock,  &c.  bought 
or  provided  for,  they  expect  to  pay  every  man  his  earnings 
weekly  in  cash,  as  of  course  they  may.  I  hope,  however, 
they  will  prefer  to  buy  more  land,  erect  thereon  a  most  sub 
stantial  and  commodious  dwelling,  surqpund  it  with  a  garden, 
shade-trees,  &c.  and  resolve  to  live  as  well  as  work  like 
brethren.  There  are  few  uses  to  which  a  member  can 
put  a  hundred  dollars  which  might  not  as  well  be  subserved 
by  seventy-five  if  the  money  of  the  whole  were  invested 
together. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  199 

The  members  were  earning  when  I  visited  them  an 
average  of  fifteen  dollars  per  week  and  meant  to  keep  doing 
so.  Of  course  they  work  hard.  Many  of  them  live  inside 
of  four  dollars  per  week,  none  go  beyond  eight.  Their 
Business  Agent  is  one  of  themselves,  who  worked  with  them 
in  the  Foundry  for  some  months  after  it  was  started.  He 
has  often  been  obliged  to  report,  '  I  can  pay  you  no  money 
this  week,'  and  never  heard  a  murmur  in  reply.  On  one 
occasion  he  went  down  to  say,  '  There  are  my  books  ;  you 
see  what  I  have  received  and  where  most  of  it  has  gone ; 
here  is  one  hundred  dollars,  which  is  all  there  is  left.'  The 
members  consulted,  calculated,  and  made  answer  ;  '  We  can 
pay  our  board  so  as  to  get  through  another  week  with  fifty 
dollars,  and  you  had  better  take  back  the  other  fifty,  for  the 
business  may  need  it  before  the  week  is  through.'  When  I 
was  there,  there  had  been  an  Iron  note  to  pay,  ditto  a  Coal, 
and  a  boat-load  of  Coal  to  lay  in  for  the  Winter,  sweeping 
ofTall  the  money,  so  that  for  more  than  three  weeks  no  man 
had  had  a  dollar.  Yet  no  one  had  thought  of  complaining, 
for  all  knew  that  the  delay  was  dictated,  not  by  another's 
interest,  but  their  own.  They  knew,  too,  that  the  assurance 
of  their  payment  did  not  depend  on  the  frugality  or  ex 
travagance  of  some  employer,  who  might  swamp  the  pro 
ceeds  of  his  business  and  their  labor  in  an  unlucky  spec 
ulation,  or  a  sumptuous  dwelling,  leaving  them  to  whistle  for 
their  money.  There  were  their  year's  earnings  visibly  around 
them  in  Stoves  and  Hollow  Ware,  for  which  they  had 
abundant  and  eager  demand  in  Cincinnati,  but  which  a  break 
in  the  canal  had  temporarily  kept  back  ;  in  iron  and  coal 
for  the  Winter's  work  ;  in  the  building  over  their  heads  and 
the  implements  in  their  hands.  And  while  other  Holders 
have  had  work  '  off  and  on,'  according  to  the  state  of  the 
business,  no  member  of  the  Journeymen's  Union  has  stood 
idle  a  day  for  want  of  work  since  their  Foundry  was  first 
starter]..  Of  course,  as  their  capital  increases,  the  danger  of 


200  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

being  compelled  to  suspend  work  at  any  future  day  grows 
less  and  less  continually. 

The  ultimate  capital  of  the  Journeymen's  Union  Foundry 
(on  the  presumption  that  the  Foundry  is  to  stand  by  itself, 
leaving  every  member  to  provide  his  own  home,  &c.)  is  to 
be  eighteen  thousand  dollars,  of  which  seven  thousand  dol 
lars  has  already  been  paid  in,  most  of  it  in  labor.  The  re 
mainder  is  all  subscribed  by  the  several  associates  and  is  to  be 
paid  in  labor  as  fast  as  possible.  That  done,  every  man  may 
be  paid  in  cash  weekly  for  his  work,  and  a  dividend  on 
his  stock  at  the  close  of  each  business  year.  The  workers 
have  saved  and  invested  from  three  hundred  dollars  to  six 
hundred  dollars  each  since  their  commencement  in  August 
of  last  year,  though  those  who  have  joined  since  the  start 
have  of  course  earned  less.  Few  or  none  had  laid  by  so 
much  in  five  to  ten  years'  working  for  others  as  they  have  in 
one  year  working  for  themselves.  The  total  value  of  their 
products  up  to  the  time  of  my  visit  is  thirty  thousand  dollars, 
and  they  were  then  making  at  the  rate  of  five  thousand  dol 
lars'  worth  per  month,  which  they  do  not  mean  to  diminish. 
All  the  profits  of  the  business,  above  the  cost  of  doing  the 
work  at  journeymen's  wages,  will  be  distributed  among 
the  stockholders  in  dividends.  The  officers  of  the  Union  are 
a  Managing  Agent,  Foreman  of  the  Foundry,  and  five 
Directors,  chosen  annually,  but  who  can  be  changed  mean 
time  in  case  of  necessity.  A  Reading  Room  and  Library 
were  to  be  started  directly  ;  a  spacious  Boarding  House 
(though  probably  not  owned  by  the  Union)  will  go  up  this 
season.  No  liquor  is  sold  within  a  long  distance  of  the 
Union,  and  there  is  little  or  no  demand  for  any.  Those 
original  members  of  the  Union  who  were  least  favorable  to 
Temperance  have  seen  fit  to  sell  out  and  go  away. 

— Now  is  it  reasonable  that  the  million  or  so  of  hireling 
laborers  throughout  our  country  who  have  work  when  it 
suits  others'  convenience  to  employ  them,  and  must  stand 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  201 

idle  perforce  when  it  does  not,  can  read  the  above  simple 
narration — which  I  have  tried  to  render  as  lucid  as  possible 
- — and  not  be  moved  to  action  thereby?  Suppose  they 
receive  all  they  earn  when  employed — which  of  course  they 
generally  do  not,  or  how  could  employers  grow  rich  by 
merely  buying  their  labor  and  selling  it  again  ? —  should  not 
the  simple  fact  that  these  Associated  Workers  never  lack 
employment  when  they  desire  it,  and  never  ask  any  master's 
leave  to  refrain  from  working  when  they  see  fit,  arrest  public 
attention  ?  Who  it  such  a  slave  in  soul  that  he  would  not 
rather  be  an  equal  member  of  a  commonwealth  than  the 
subject  of  a  despotism  ?  Who  would  not  like  to  taste  the 
sweets  of  Liberty  on  work-days  as  well  as  holidays  ?  Is 
there  a  creature  so  abject  that  he  considers  all  this  mere 
poetry  and  moonshine,  which  a  little  hard  experience  will 
dissipate  ?  Suppose  the  Cincinnati  Iron-Molders'  Association 
should  break  down,  either  through  some  defect  in  its  organ 
ization  or  some  dishonesty  or  other  misconduct  on  the  part 
of  one  or  more  of  its  members  —  what  would  that  prove  ? 
Would  it  any  more  prove  the  impracticability  of  Industrial 
Associations  than  the  shipwreck  and  death  of  Columbus, 
had  such  a  disaster  occurred  on  his  second  or  third  voyage 
to  America,  would  have  disproved  the  existence  of  the  New 
World  ? 

Can  it  be  that  I  have  not  yet  succeeded  in  making  clear 
the  feasibility  as  well  as  the  importance  of  the  Reform  here 
indicated?  Is  there  anything  occult,  or  dubious,  or  mys 
terious  in  the  process?  Doubtless,  the  application  of  the 
principle  to  other  handicrafts  would  require  modifications  in 
the  details,  which  experience  and  practical  knowledge  will 
suggest ;  but  what  of  that  ?  What  is  there  to  hinder  the  im 
mediate  organization  on  this  basis  of  such  callings  as  do  not 
involve  complicated  processes  and  the  aggregation  of  large 
capitals  for  their  economical  and  effective  prosecution? 
Why  should  Tailors,  Shoemakers,  Hatters,  Cabinet-Makers, 


OQ2  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

&c.  &c.,  continue  to  work  for  masters  instead  of  combining  to 
work  for  customers  ?  To  illustrate  still  farther  the  facility 
and  the  advantage -of  the  change  proposed,  I  will  take  the  case 
of  the  Boot  and  Shoemakers. 

There  are  probably  Ten  Thousand  Men  and  at  least  Five 
Thousand  Women  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  Boots  and 
Shoes  within  half  a  day's  ride  of  our  City  Hall  —  possibly 
twice  that  number.  A  few  of  them  receive  quite  fair  wages, 
but  the  great  majority  are  working  for  very  poor  pay,  and 
even  at  that  can  get  nothing  to  do  for  some  weeks  if  not 
months  in  every  year.  Nearly  all  are  obliged  every  few 
weeks  to  troop  from  shoe-store  to  shoe-store,  begging  for 
work,  and  ready  to  accept  it  on  any  terms  which  will  enable 
them  to  keep  what  little  soul  men  so  circumstanced  can 
afford  to  have  in  their  bent  and  crouching  bodies. 

On  one  of  our  street-corners  is  the  store  of  a  shoe-dealing 
firm — we  will  call  it  Stirrup  &  Co.  —  which  has  sold  One 
Million  Dollars'  worth  of  shoes  during  the  past  year,  and  net 
ted  a  clear  profit  of  One  Hundred  Thousand  Dollars  —  fifty 
thousand  to  each  partner.  I  do  not  believe  all  the  actual 
makers  of  Shoes  and  Boots  between  Philadelphia,  Pough- 
keepsie,  New-Haven  and  Sandy  Hook  were  together 
enabled  to  lay  up  One  Hundred  Thousand  Dollars  in  1849. 
Now  don't  fancy  that  I  am  about  to  preach  a  Jacobinic 
crusade  against  Stirrup  &  Co.  They  made  their  money 
fairly,  as  the  world  goes,  and  nobody  has  any  right  to  re 
proach  them.  If  Labor  had  seen  fit  to  do  without  their  ser 
vices,  it  was  at  perfect  liberty  to  do  so  ;  but  it  did  n't.  The 
fact  that  the  Shoe  business  saw  fit  to  find  a  channel  through 
such  stores  as  theirs  proves  that  no  better  was  in  existence. 
But  there  should  be  better,  and  the  Shoemakers  have  no 
body  but  themselves  to  blame  that  there  is  not.  They  might 
have  steady  instead  of  unsteady  work,  and  full  pay  instead  of 
part  pay,  if  they  only  would.  Let  me  endeavor  in  a  rough 
way  to  show  how : 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  203 

Suppose  One  Thousand  Workers  on  Boots  and  Shoes, 
old  and  young,  male  and  female,  good  and  indifferent,  some 
living  in  our  City  and  some  around  in  its  vicinity,  were  to 
meet  here  on  some  appointed  day,  and  resolved  to  become 
their  own  employers.  To  this  end  they  agree  to  pay  in 
twenty-five  dollars  each  to  form  a  common  fund,  making  in 
all  twenty-five  thousand  dollars.  The  sole  condition  of  their 
union  is  that  each  one  shall  have  constant  employment  and 
full  pay  for  his  work — that  is,  in  the  first  place,  the  regular 
journeymen's  wages. 

They  proceed  at  once  to  elect  a  first-rate  cutter  or  foreman 
and  overseer  of  work,  and  the  very  best  business  man  they 
can  get,  no  matter  though  they  have  to  pay  him  two  thousand 
dollars  a  year.  This  agent  must  be  a  man  of  known  integ 
rity  as  well  as  capacity,  able  to  give  ample  bonds  for  the 
safety  of  the  funds.  This  agent  and  foreman  proceed  to 
take  the  right  sort  of  a  store  or  stand  for  business,  and  adver 
tise  the  public  that  the  Journeymen  Shoemakers'  Union  is 
prepared  to  supply  the  public  with  Boots  and  Shoes  of  all 
kinds  at  the  shortest  notice  and  at  fair  prices.  They  buy 
stock  with  cash  at  wholesale  prices,  distribute  it  to  the  mem 
bers  with  directions  to  make  up  such  work  as  they  are  sev 
erally  best  qualified  for,  and  as  shall  seem  to  be  required  to 
perfect  an  assortment  for  the  demands  of  the  trade.  On  the 
Saturday  following,  let  the  store  be  opened  for  customers, 
and  the  public  called  to  enter  and  buy  for  cash  at  cash 
prices. 

Each  workman  should  be  paid  once  a  week,  if  he  chooses 
to  send  in  his  work  so  often,  as  those  living  out  of  the  city 
probably  would  not.  Friday  should  be  the  general  day  for 
receiving  work  from  associates  and  paying  them  off,  all  the 
work  being  passed  upon  as  received,  and  paid  exactly  accord 
ing  to  its  value,  leaving  each  worker  the  option  of  making 
poor  or  good  work  —  fine  boots,  coarse  shoes,  ladies'  gaiters, 
or  whatever  he  should  prefer  ;  though  of  course  a  demand 


204  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

for  any  kind  of  work  would  be  intimated  by  the  foreman  to 
the  workers  and  some  of  them  induced  to  supply  it. 
Customers  would  be  measured  here  as  elsewhere,  and 
promptly  supplied  with  the  best  or  poorer  articles,  as  they 
might  prefer.  Each  worker  might  stamp  his  own  work  with 
his  name  or  mark,  and  any  one  choosing  to  order  his  work 
done  by  a  particular  maker  would  be  obeyed.  To  the  best 
workmen  would  naturally  be  assigned  the  best  and  most 
profitable  work.  But  every  person  belonging  to  the  Union 
should  be  furnished  with  stock  on  demand  at  all  times,  and 
credited  with  his  products,  when  sent  in,  according  to  their 
value. 

Twenty-five  dollars  per  man  would  be  a  short  capital  — 
fifty  would  be  better,  but  not  so  easily  raised.  With  twenty- 
five,  a  good  agent  would  be  able  to  keep  the  wheels  moving. 
If  temporarily  short  of  money,  he  would  always  have  stock 
or  shoes  to  pledge  for  it,  and  could  borrow  on  security  till 
money  came  in  from  customers.  Such  a  concern,  well 
managed,  might  sell  ten  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  Boots 
and  Shoes  per  week  at  retail,  at  a  profit  of  ten  per  cent, 
on  the  cost  of  stock  and  journeymen's  wages  for  working 
it  up. 

At  the  end  of  each  year  there  should  be  a  settlement,  and 
all  clear  profits  carried  to  the  credit  of  the  shareholders. 
The  first  twenty-five  thousand  dollars  should  be  divided  to 
them  in  stock,  increasing  the  cash  capital  to  fifty  thousand 
dollars,  which  would  be  sufficient  for  an  inflexibly  cash 
business.  But  the  balance  should  not  be  divided  and  frit 
tered  away.  It  ought  to  be  expended  in  buying  for  all  the 
associates,  first,  an  eligible  and  desirable  plat  of  cheap  land 
—  say  two  miles  square  —  on  the  Erie,  Long-Island  or  some 
other  Railroad  ;  next  in  laying  it  out  to  the  best  advantage 
into  streets  and  small  allotments,  and  then  setting  to  each 
one  his  separate  acre.  The  balance  might  then  be  sold 
(after  making  suitable  reservations  for  churches,  school- 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  LABOR.  205 

houses,  groves,  squares,  &c.)  to  grocers,  artisans,  £c.,  for 
more  than  the  whole  need  cost,  so  soon  as  it  should  be  de 
cided  that  the  Shoemakers  were  to  occupy  their  allotments, 
thus  making  a  village  of  a  waste.  Perhaps  they  would  now 
see  fit  to  put  up  a  grand  Shoe-shop,  calculated  to  accommo 
date  them  all — and  perhaps  they  would  not  stop  at  this  — 
but  let  us  not  ask  them  to  go  too  far.  Suffice  it  that  they 
might  at  all  times  divide  the  profits  of  their  business  and 
spend  them  if  they  thought  proper. 

—  Such  is  a  hasty  outline  of  a  plan  for  the  Emancipation 
of  the  Shoemakers  of  New- York  and  vicinity  from  depend 
ence  on  any  employer  but  the  shoe-wearing  public  generally. 
It  is  doubtless  imperfect,  and  susceptible  of  many  improve 
ments.  Well,  make  them,  then,  and  let  the  enterprise  be  got 
under  headway  at  once.  The  Shoemakers  have  been  rather 
low  down  among  Mechanics  for  some  years.  Why  should 
they  not  go  up  to  the  head  in  the  great  work  of  making 
Labor  its  own  master?  They  can  if  they  will,  and  much 
easier  than  almost  any  other  trade.  Let  us  hope  that,  before 
this  year  expires,  they  WILL. 
18 


206  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 


VII. 

TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING: 

A      LECTURE. 

To  DO  good  is  the  proper  business  of  life — to  qualify  for 
earnestness  and  efficiency  in  doing  good,  is  the  true  end  of 
Education.  The  sum  of  all  true  knowledge  in  the  child  is 
a  consciousness  that  he  lives  not  for  himself,  but  for  his 
Creator  and  his  Race.  Let  him  but  comprehend  and  accept 
this  destiny,  and  all  formal  lessons  of  morality,  all  deca 
logues  and  criminal  codes,  become  to  him  matters  of  small 
account.  He  needs  no  admonition  not  to  steal,  to  lie,  to 
covet,  nor  to  slay;  no  doctor  of  divinity  nor  professor  of 
ethics  to  decide  whether  slave-holding  and  war  be  right  or 
wrong ;  if  he  has  but  received  into  his  inmost  heart  the  pri 
mal,  central  truth,  that  the  human  family  live  for  and  through 
each  other,  and  that,  in  the  abasement  or  exaltation  of  any, 
each  is  abased  or  exalted.  "  All  the  law  and  the  prophets" 
may  still  be  useful  as  counsel,  as  wisdom,  as  guidance ;  but 
no  longer  as  conducing  to  whatever  is  intrinsic  and  essen 
tial.  The  one  commandment,  welcomed  and  obeyed  in  the 
sunlight  of  its  manifest  reasonableness  and  necessity  as  an 
elemental  law  of  the  universe,  supplants  or  dwarfs  all  others. 
Know  but  that  this  is  no  barren  abstraction,  no  oriental 
exaggeration,  but  the  simplest  dictate  of  heaven  and  nature, 
beaming  alike  from  the  loftiest  star  and  from  the  humblest 
blossom,  and  all  beside  that  philosophic  lore,  and  pious 


TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING.  207 

exhortation,  or  even  sacred  writ,  can  convey  to  you,  is  sub 
sidiary  and  incidental.  '  Love  God  with  all  thy  heart  and 
thy  neighbor  as  thyself,'  is  the  sun  of  the  moral  universe,  in 
whose  presence  the  brightest  stars  become  dim  and  invisible. 

Well  were  it  if  the  education  of  the  heart  could  precede 
and  prepare  for  the  education  of  the  mind  and  the  body,  but 
this  may  not  be.  With  the  earliest  development  of  sensa 
tion  and  of  muscular  energy,  while  the  child  is  still  appa 
rently  unsusceptible  of  any  thorough  and  enduring  moral 
culture,  come  swarming  shoals  of  perverted  and  misleading 
passions  —  untamed  appetite,  imperious  temper,  ungovernable 
will.  The  consciousness  of  self,  of  individual  wants,  suf 
ferings,  enjoyments,  is  felt  with  the  first  dawn  of  intellect ; 
the  knowledge  of  our  relations  and  duties  to  others  is  the 
slow  acquirement  of  maturer  years.  And,  as  distortion  or 
misdevelopment  in  one  sphere  very  surely  induces  defects 
and  perversions  in  others,  it  is  hardly  possible  to  overstate 
the  disturbing,  deranging,  blighting  influence  which  moral 
obliquity  exerts  upon  the  education  of  the  physical  and  in 
tellectual  being.  From  a  chaos  of  moral  infirmities,  intellec 
tual  deficiencies  and  physical  perversions  in  the  child,  is 
to  be  deduced  the  thoroughly  informed,  enlightened,  wise, 
energetic,  sternly  upright,  self-denying,  all-loving,  effective, 
healthy  man. 

Into  the  midst  of  this  chaos,  the  true  teacher  fearlessly 
casts  himself,  the  Van  Amburgh  of  every-day  life.  It  is  his 
mission  to  grapple  with  all  the  elements  of  moral  and  mental 
disorder,  and  bid  them  '  stand  ruled.'  As  '  out  of  the  net 
tle  Danger  we  pluck  the  flower  Safety,'  his  task  is  to  pluck 
from  the  unweeded  garden  of  wayward  childhood  the  rich 
fruit  of  a  true  and  genial  manhood.  The  marvels  of  chemi 
cal  transmutation  are  tame  compared  with  those  he  is  required 
and  expected  to  perform.  To  render  the  froward  gentle, 
the  reckless  considerate,  to  dignify  the  degraded  and  spiritu 
alize  the  clod,  such  are  among  the  arduous  requirements  of 


208  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

his  sphere  and  calling.     That  he  should  often  fail  is  inevi 
table  ;  the  wonder  is  that  he  should  ever  succeed. 

No  engineer,  no  mathematician,  is  required  to  make  allow 
ance  for  so  many  disturbing  and  conflicting  forces  as  he,  the 
moral  Leverrier,  who  is  required  not  merely  to  discover  but 
seemingly  to  create  the  Franklins  and  Washingtons  of  the 
time.  His  theories,  be  they  what  they  may,  must  often  give 
way  to  unwelcome  but  stubborn  facts.  He  may,  for  instance, 
have  adopted  the  principle  that  human  beings  are  not  to  be 
constrained  to  do  right  by  violence,  but  won  to  the  love  and 
practice  of  all  virtue  by  attraction,  by  instruction,  by  admo 
nition,  by  gentleness,  by  fervent  love.  That  this  is  the  true 
theory,  I  trust  few  at  this  day  will  dispute.  But  the  public 
teacher  often  finds  himself  confronted  with  apparently  insu 
perable  difficulties  in  attempting  to  conform  to  this  theory 
implicitly.  For  his  instructions,  his  discipline,  form  at  best 
but  a  small  portion  of  the  motley  superstructure  which  com 
poses  the  child's  education ;  the  lessons  of  the  fireside  and 
the  wayside  have  been  potential  before  his ;  are  more  nume 
rous  and  pervading  now  than  his ;  will  be  vivid  and  power 
ful  after  he  and  his  are  forgotten.  He  tries  the  virtue  of 
moral  suasion  upon  one  who  from  the  cradle  has  known  no 
other  power  than  physical  force  ;  no  other  dread  but  that  of 
bodily  pain  ;  no  influence  but  that  of  the  appetite  or  the  rod. 
To  a  mind  so  trained,  all  appeals  to  the  heart  or  the  con 
science  are  flummery;  the  disuse  of  the  rod  can  only  seem 
the  dictate  of  weakness  or  cowardice ;  and  where  penalty 
stops  anarchy  begins.  How  can  any  general  rule  be  arbi 
trarily  laid  down  to  cover  such  cases  as  this  ?  Invest  the 
teacher  with  the  authority  and  the  intimacy  of  a  parent ;  let 
the  child  be  constantly  under  his  supervision  and  care,  and 
he  may  hope  by  patient  endurance  to  translate  and  commend 
the  principles  by  which  he  is  guided  to  the  apprehension  of 
the  most  hardened  and^stolid.  But  while  his  lessons  of  six 
hours  per  day  are  contradicted  by  those  of  the  other  eighteen, 


TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING.  o0g 

especially  with  the  immense  advantage  of  several  years'  start 
to  the  latter,  what  shall  the  teacher  do  ?  How  adapt  the 
new  wine  to  the  old  bottle  ?  and  to  the  bottle-imp  confined 
therein  ?  The  system  of  discipline  which  eschews  the  in 
fliction  of  physical  pain  as  the  penalty  of  moral  aberration 
is  undoubtedly  the  true  one  wherever  its  subject  can  be 
steadily  exposed  to  its  undisturbed  influences ;  but  where 
violence  rules  the  hours  out  of  school,  as  it  has  ruled  the 
years  before  school,  what  is  the  teacher  to  do  ?  What  can 
we  say  more  than  that  he  must  do  the  best  he  can  ? 

The  great  work  incumbent  on  him  in  this  connection, 
however,  is  that  of  dispelling  from  the  pupil's  mind  a  false 
notion  of  the  nature  of  Law,  and  of  implanting  a  true  one 
in  its  stead.  Law,  to  the  apprehension  of  the  ignorant  and 
the  vicious,  is  but.  the  exhibition  of  a  Will  as  capricious 
and  as  selfish  as  their  own,  differing  thence  only  in  that  it  is 
stronger  and  more  imperious.  To  the  confutation  of  this 
error  the  teacher  should  sedulously  devote  himself.  He 
should  have  as  few  prohibitions  as  possible  ;  far  better  let 
two  real  offences  pass  unreproved,  unnoticed,  than  to  punish 
one  act  which  involves  no  real  culpability.  He  should  de 
vote  all  the  time  necessary  —  no  matter  how  much  —  to  de 
monstrating,  even  to  the  humblest  capacity,  the  most  perverse 
nature,  the  reasonableness  of,  the  necessity  for,  every  re 
quirement  and  prohibition.  As  the  exponent  and  minister 
of  Law,  it  is  his  first  duty  to  cause  every  subject  to  realize 
that  Law  is  no  arbitrary  despot,  no  blind,  remorseless  Fate, 
but  the  loving,  genial  friend  and  guardian  of  all,  himself  in 
cluded,  and  that  it  smites  but  to  heal.  Next  to,  and  conse 
quent  upon  the  love  of  God  and  man,  the  love  of  Law,  as 
a  divinely-appointed  guide,  monitor,  and  beacon-light,  is  to 
be  inculcated  and  implanted  with  the  most  devoted  assiduity. 

But  this  can  never  be  consummated  if  the  pupil  finds  him 
self  hedged  about  with  innumerable  arbitrary  and  unreason- 
18* 


210  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

able  commands  and  injunctions :  if  a  look  aside  from  the 
lesson,  a  smile  at  some  passing  drollery  or  incongruity,  a 
movement  of  the  weary  muscles,  is  to  be  watched  for  and 
reprehended  as  a  crime.  To  render  authority  respected, 
and  obedience  general,  it  is  essential  that  Law  should  con 
front  Inclination  on  the  fewest  points  possible.  We  may  not, 
indeed,  be  able  to  render  the  reasonableness  and  necessity 
of  every  separate  command  perfectly  obvious  to  the  infantile 
apprehension,  but  we  can  do  this  by  adequate  effort  and 
earnest  assiduity  with  the  great  majority  of  our  inhibitions, 
and  so  create  and  justify  a  strong  presumption  that  those 
whereof  the  reason  is  not  so  fully  understood  are  equally 
well  grounded  in  a  regard  for  the  subject's  enduring  wel 
fare.  When  a  child  has  once  realized  profoundly  that 
the  laws  he  is  required  to  obey  are  founded  in  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  his  own  nature  and  its  requirements,  and  are 
calculated  to  increase  the  sum  of  his  personal  good,  and  not 
rather  to  subtract  from  the  measure  of  his  enjoyments  in  or 
der  to  expand  or  secure  those  of  others,  his  future  govern 
ment  will  be  a  work  of  guidance  merely,  and  can  cost  but 
very  little  trouble. 

As  with  Government  or  discipline,  so  with  the  more  im 
mediate  business  of  Education  itself.  The  teacher's  first 
point  is  to  impress  thoroughly  on  the  pupil's  mind  the  truth 
that  whatever  of  irksomeness  or  weariness  of  the  flesh  may 
be  experienced  by  either  in  the  process  of  instruction  is  en 
countered  primarily  and  mainly  for  the  learner's  own  sake, 
and  not  for  that  of  his  relatives  or  his  monitors.  He  must 
feel  that  he  is  not  fulfilling  a  useless  task  but  securing  an  in 
dispensable  treasure.  To  grudge  the  youthful  hours  ab 
stracted  from  the  acquirement  of  useful  knowledge  as  the 
spilling  of  some  priceless  fluid  on  the  thirsty  and  remorse 
less  sands  of  Sahara,  is  the  feeling  with  which  every  pupil 
should  be  sedulously  imbued  and  animated. 

Of  course,  no  one  fit  to  be  a  teacher  is  likely  to  fall  into 


TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING.  211 

the  error  of  deeming  the  rudimental  culture  of  certain  well- 
nigh  mechanical  functions  of  the  intellect  Education,  al 
though  the  poverty  of  language  and  a  colloquial  convenience 
may  tempt  to  such  an  accommodated  use  of  the  term.  In 
the  larger,  truer  sense,  Education  implies  the  development, 
drawing  out,  of  the  whole  nature,  moral,  physical,  intellect 
ual,  social.  The  acquisition  of  the  mechanical  facility  of 
reading,  writing,  computing,  &c.,  the  sharpening  of  the 
youthful  intellect  on  the  rough  grindstone  of  Letters,  is  no 
more  Education  than  is  learning  to  mow  or  to  swim.  The 
direct  inculcations  of  the  class  can  but  supply  the  pupil 
with  a  few  rude  implements  of  Education  —  the  ax  where 
with  he  may  clear  and  the  plow  wherewith  to  break  up 
the  rugged  patrimony  which  has  fallen  to  him  in  its  state  of 
primal  wilderness.  These  are  most  valuable — nay  indis 
pensable  — but  they  must  be  taken  for  what  they  are,  and 
for  nothing  more.  The  youth  who  fancies  himself  educated 
because  he  has  fully  mastered  ever  so  many  branches  of 
mere  school-learning,  is  laboring  under  a  deplorable  and 
perilous  delusion.  He  may  have  learned  all  that  the  schools, 
the  seminaries,  and  even  our  miscalled  universities,  neces 
sarily  teach,  and  still  be  a  pitiably  ignorant  man,  unable  to 
earn  a  week's  subsistence,  to  resist  the  promptings  of  a  per 
verted  appetite,  or  to  shield  himself  from  such  common  re 
sults  of  physical  depravity  as  Dyspepsia,  Hypochondria, 
and  Nervous  derangement.  A  master  of  Greek  and  He 
brew  who  knows  not  how  to  grow  Potatoes,  and  can  be 
tempted  to  drown  his  reason  in  the  intoxicating  bowl,  is  far 
more  imperfectly  educated  than  many  an  unlettered  back 
woodsman.  The  public  teacher  is  indeed  virtually  limited 
in  his  stated  inculcations  to  a  narrow  circle  of  Arts  and  Sci 
ences,  so  called,  but  he  should  nevertheless  endeavor  so  to 
teach  as  to  secure  in  the  end  a  thoroughly  symmetrical  cul 
ture.  The  education  of  the  prince  will  differ  somewhat 
from  that  of  the  plow-jogger,  but  either  should  be  consistent 


212  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

with  itself  and  thoroughly  adapted  to  the  nature  of  both  as 
well  as  to  the  circumstances  of  each. 

Nor  is  this  all.  Each  should  be  so  educated  that  if  For 
tune  should  call  him  to  fill  the  place  of  the  other  he  would 
do  so  naturally,  heartily,  effectively.  Being  educated  .as  a 
Man,  he  should  be  able  promptly  to  qualify  himself  for  and 
adapt  himself  to  whatever  a  man  may  properly  be  required 
to  do.  Herein  is  laid  the  only  solid  foundation  for  a  life  of 
manly  independence,  and  a  readiness  to  brave  all  the  pos 
sible  consequences  of  a  frank  truthfulness,  and  a  generous, 
fearless  devotion  to  the  highest  and  enduring  good. 

Herein,  too,  is  the  condemnation  of  our  ordinary  training. 
It  is  too  special,  narrow,  one-sided.  The  merchant,  we  will 
say,  educates  his  son  for  a  merchant,  and  tolerably  well  with 
a  view  to  that  particular  calling.  But  we  live  in  a  world  and 
an  age  of  mutation.  The  ground  perpetually  rocks  and 
heaves  beneath  our  feet,  throwing  up  new  eminences  and 
opening  chasms  where  bights  have  lately  been.  The  young 
man  who  enters  on  the  stage  of  action  at  twenty  a  trader, 
banker,  doctor,  will  very  likely  be  found  pursuing  a  very 
different  vocation  at  forty,  or  at  least  unable  to  follow  advan 
tageously  that  in  which  he  began  life.  Joe  Dobbs,  the 
Yankee  stable-boy  of  1830,  becomes  the  Western  horse- 
dealer  of  '36,  and  very  likely  the  South  American  Cavalry 
Colonel  of  1840,  thence  branching  off  into  running  steam 
boats  on  the  Paraguay,  or  working  gold  mines  in  the  Cordil 
leras,  unless  he  happen  to  have  a  taste  for  Politics,  and  so 
undertake  a  job  of  Constitution-making  or  accept  the  post  of 
Foreign  Secretary  of  State.  On  the  other  hand,  a  Nabob's 
son  who  does  not  quite  graduate  at  Yale,  owing  to  some 
trifling  irregularities,  is  perfectly  successful  in  doing  so  at 
wine-parties,  gaming-saloons,  and  ultimately  at  Sing-Sing. 
No  man's  destiny,  hardly  his  vocation,  can  be  predicted  with 
anything  like  certainty  ;  and  the  only  safe  plan  of  Education 


TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING.  213 

is  that  which  shall  prepare  him  for  usefulness  and  indepen 
dence  in  every  imaginable  contingency. 

Now,  while  the  teacher  can  not  be  allowed  to  forget  that  it 
is  his  primary  duty,  so  far  as  purely  intellectual  culture  is  con 
cerned,  to  supply  his  pupils  with  the  mere  implements  of 
Education  —  with  the  ax,  the  saw,  the  plane,  wherewith  they 
are  to  work  out  an  Education  each  for  himself — he  must 
never  fall  mentally  into  the  error  of  confounding  these  with 
the  essential  thing  itself.  It  is  not  enough  jhat  the  child  be 
taught  to  realize  that  he  is  to  master  the  arbitrary  and  ca 
pricious  spelling  of  a  page  of  crooked  words,  not  as  an  in 
genious  puzzle,  a  mental  exercise,  nor  even  for  any  intrinsic 
worth  thereof  as  a  mental  acquisition,  but  simply  because  of 
the  practical  uses  of  that  acquisition,  and  the  indispensable- 
ness  of  this  knowledge  to  a  clear  and  accurate  understanding 
of  the  meaning  of  written  language.  The  farther  use  of  a 
correct  Orthography  in  fixing  and  throwing  light  upon  the 
meaning  of  words  and  sentences  is  of  course  to  be  explained 
to  and  impressed  upon  the  learner's  mind.  Yet  after  all, 
the  central  truth  that  all  instruction  in  letters  is  but  means  to 
an  end  —  an  end  immensely  transcending  in  importance 
all  scholastic  eminence  in  itself  considered  —  can  not  be  too 
profoundly  realized  by  the  teacher  nor  too  sedulously  im 
pressed  on  the  learner.  He  whose  admiring  contemplation 
rests  on  the  prizes  of  successful  scholarship — who  thinks 
more  of  the  honors  awarded  to  the  most  proficient  in  any 
branch  of  study  than  of  the  remoter  uses  of  his  proficiency 
—  is  readily  perceived  to  be  laboring  under  a  baneful  de 
lusion  ;  but  not  less  so  is  he  who  prizes  Intellectual  Culture 
unless  accompanied  by  Moral,  and  except  as  conducive 
to  ends  of  practical  utility.  That  teaching  has  been  most 
effective,  however  simple  in  manner  or  deficient  in  quantity, 
which  has  qualified,  enabled  the  pupil  to  find  a  salutary  les 
son  in  every  passing  event,  a  healthful  companionship  in  his 
own  thoughts,  a  meaning  and  a  wondrous  beauty  in  every 


214  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

changing  phase  of  Nature.  He  who  knows  how  to  do,  when 
to  do,  and  stands  ready  with  a  hearty  will  to  do,  whatever  it 
is  or  fairly  may  be  incumbent  on  him  to  do,  perilous  though 
it  be,  and  apart  from  the  sense  of  duty  repulsive,  is  truly 
educated,  though  he  knows  nothing  of  logarithms  or  Latin  ; 
while  the  graduate  with  highest  honors  at  Oxford  or  Gottingen 
may  be  as  essentially  ignorant  as  many  a  Typee  or  Hottentot. 
Fitness  and  utility  are  the  only  tests  of  the  value  of  an 
acquirement.  w 

I  have  reminded  you,  but  am  not  satisfied  with  the  mere 
suggestion,  that  Education  is  essentially  Development.  The 
teacher  must  never  forget  that  he  has  much  to  learn  of  his 
pupil  before  he  can  safely  assume  to  instruct  him.  Few  of 
us  will  not  readily  recall  instances  within  his  own  experience 
where  a  youth,  wearied  and  sorely  perplexed  with  some 
puzzling  problem  in  his  Arithmetic,  has  been  caught  by  his 
instructer  flagrante  delieto,  having  been  tempted  by  his 
aching  brain  into  the  astounding  depravity  of  sketching  a 
house,  a  ship,  a  tree,  or  a  face,  on  his  slate.  Black  grew 
the  brow  of  the  master  at  the  sight  of  this  enormity,  and  his 
virtuous  indignation  was  only  assuaged  by  the  infliction  on 
the  shrinking  body  of  the  conscience-smitten  culprit  of  sundry 
thumps  and  bruises,  whereby  Justice  was  satiated  and 
the  evil  example  carefully  guarded  against.  But  at  length 
it  has  crawled  through  the  hair  of  Pedagoguism  that  this 
propensity  for  sketching  need  not  absolutely  be  treated  as 
one  of  the  seven  deadly  sins  —  that  it  may  even  be  tolerated, 
patronized,  licked  into  shape,  so  as  to  take  rank  in  the  end  as 
a  decent,  well-favored  pedagogical  acquirement.  How  many 
millions  of  palms  have  been  blistered  by  the  ferule,  how 
many  backs  have  been  warmed  by  the  rod,  to  beat  this 
tendency  to  linear  drawing  out  of  the  minds  of  pupils  before 
the  first  attempt  was  made  to  beat  it  {»,  it  would  be  idle  to 
guess  at.  The  practical  use  of  the  notorious  facts  in  this 
instance  is  to  suggest  farther  inquiries  in  the  same  broad 


TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING.  215 

field,  that  we  may  see  whether  there  are  not  other  tendencies 
of  the  youthful  nature  which  we  rush  eagerly  to  punish  and 
repress  when,  were  we  wiser,  we  should  rather  guide, 
encourage,  and  rightly  develop  them.  I  can  not  doubt  that 
many  millions  of  lithe,  graceful  rods  have  been  rudely  torn 
from  their  parent  trees  and  worse  than  wasted  on  juvenile 
backs  in  vain  attempts  to  repress  the  superabounding  mus 
cular  energies  of  boyhood,  where  wiser  teachers  would  have 
said  to  the  several  offenders,  "  If  you  feel  too  restless  to  sit 
still  and  study,  be  good  enough  not  to  disturb  others  by 
whispering,  or  tickling,  or  other  mischief,  but  step  out,  take 
a  brisk  run  of  half  a  mile  or  so,  climb  a  smooth  tree,  or  hurl 
heavy  stones  until  you  shall  feel  like  coming  in  and  study 
ing  quietly."  That  such  liberty  would  sometimes  be 
abused,  is  a  matter  of  course  ;  but  that  very  abuse  would 
tend  promptly  to  correct  the  original  fault  and  ultimately  the 
superimposed  truancy  also.  The  mysterious  luxury  of  break 
ing  laws  will  lose  its  zest  when  the  lawgiver  evinces  his  read 
iness  to  obviate  any  needless  severity  involved  therein,  and  to 
accommodate  or  even  relax  them  in  the  subject's  favor  so 
far  as  is  compatible  with  that  subject's  ultimate  well-being. 
To  defer  our  own  to  others'  good  is  the  perfection  of  moral 
culture,  and  can  not  be  expected  to  precede  the  long  course 
of  wise  and  careful  training  which  is  required  to  produce  it. 
Meantime,  while  keeping  it  ever  in  view,  it  is  just  and  neces 
sary  to  secure  obedience  and  growth  by  means  of  laws  of  inferior 
scope  and  more  personal  bearing.  To  do  right  because  it  is 
right,  without  asking  what  will  be  the  effect  of  so  doing  on 
our  individual  well-being,  is  the  consummation,  not  the  begin 
ning  of  moral  culture.  Pending  that  consummation,  attained 
as  yet  by  so  few,  even  of  the  ripe  in  years  and  in  experience, 
we  must  guide  and  profit  by  such  springs  of  action  as  we  find 
already  implanted  in  the  youthful  breast. 

But  let  the  great  fundamental  truth  that  '  No  man  (right 
fully)  liveth  to  himself,'  be  ever  the  pole-star  of  all  moral 


216  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

inculcation.  The  child  taught  to  practise  virtue  mainly  that 
he  may  reap  the  rewards  of  virtue  and  to  shun  transgression 
because  of  the  perils  and  penalties  of  transgression,  is 
viciously  taught,  and  will  hardly  fail  to  exhibit  the  fruits  of 
vicious  training  in  his  subsequent  career.  Such  good 
savors  too  much  of  enlightened,  wary  and  cunning  evil. 
The  taint  of  utter  selfishness  poisons  all  it  touches.  What 
merit  can  there  be  in  serving  God  for  the  best  of  wages 
when  we  know  that  the  devil  pays  only  in  counterfeit  coin  ? 
The  truly  virtuous  do  good  from  an  inherent  love  of  good, 
because  it  is  the  spontaneous  dictate  of  their  moral  nature, 
and  because  it  is  calculated  to  increase  and  diffuse  happiness. 
If  it  were  possible  to  blot  the  Creator  from  his  Universe,  the 
good  man  would  be  no  more  deflected  from  his  unvarying 
moral  course  than  by  the  death  of  an  earthly  father. 
Against  the  temptations  and  trials  of  frail  mortality  there  can 
be  no  absolute  safeguard,  but  if  there  be  any  all-pervading, 
all-enduring  security  for  rectitude,  it  is  found  in  the  convic 
tion  that  Virtue  is  intrinsically  more  desirable  than  Honors, 
Rewards  or  personal  Happiness.  The  mists  of  overmaster 
ing  temptation  may  obscure  every  orb  in  the  moral  firmament, 
but  this  is  the  sun  which  shines  longest  and  brightest  of  all. 
That  a  pure  Heart  is  of  vastly  greater  moment  than  a 
sharpened  Understanding,  is  a  truth  too  palpable  to  be  dwelt 
on  here,  and  that  it  is  the  business  of  the  teacher,  however 
limited  his  sphere  or  imperfect  his  opportunities,  to  develop 
rightly  the  moral  affections  no  less  than  the  intellectual  facul 
ties  of  his  pupils,  I  presume  no  one  has  ever  questioned. 
Yet  I  apprehend  that  the  truth  is  but  half  understood  by  or 
half  impressed  upon  the  minds  of  a  majority  of  teachers.  I 
fear  that  too  many  fail  to  appreciate  the  evil  consequences  up 
on  some  scores  of  ingenuous,  receptive  minds,  of  any  casual 
exhibition  of  meanness,  or  falsehood,  or  unworthy  passion, 
on  the  part  of  him  who  is  their  common  exemplar  and  ruler. 
How  dare  a  man  do  a  base  act,  or  harbor  a  base  thought, 


TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING.  217 

when  acting  under  such  a  tremendous  responsibility  ?  Yet 
I  have  known  instructors,  directly  under  the  piercing 
eyes  of  their  charges,  evince  an  unworthy  and  partial  def 
erence  for  the  children  of  their  more  wealthy  and  honored 
patrons,  or  a  mean  conformity  to  fashion  or  popular  preju 
dice,  which  could  not  fail  to  exert  the  most  pernicious  in 
fluence  upon  every  immature  observer.  It  is  idle  to  expect 
that  Ids  influence  will  do  anything  toward  inculcating  the 
love  or  practice  of  virtue  who  himself  evinces  that  he  regards 
wealthy  or  powerful  mediocrity  above  poor  and  humble  ex 
cellence.  Of  all  the  lessons  the  teacher  gives,  that  of  his 
daily  walk  and  conversation  is  the  most  potent  and  en 
during. 

I  apprehend  that  there  is  a  radical  defect  in  our  popular 
inculcations  with  regard  to  Manners,  Breeding,  Courtesy, 
though  I  do  not  know  that  I  shall  succeed  in  making  it 
manifest.  That  we  owe  a  certain  deference  to  our  fellow- 
beings  generally,  and  should  ever  stand  ready  to  serve  ^hem, 
is  of  course  understood.  That  a  manifestation  of  respect  is 
likewise  due  to  rank,  station,  authority,  social  eminence,  is 
also  obvious.  But  when  the  teacher  requires  his  pupils  to 
render  certain  outward  symbols  of  deference  to  every  one 
they  may  meet ;  above  all,  when  he  teaches  them  to  observe 
a  prescribed  formula  in  entering  or  leaving  the  presence  of 
others,  is  there  not  a  peril  that  conformity  will  degenerate 
into  rank  hypocrisy  or  sheer  grimace  ?  Is  there  not  a  clear 
demand  for  a  spontaneity  and  hearty  directness  in  all  our  in 
tercourse  with  others  ?  Do  the  prescribed  courtesies  mean  and 
are  they  intended  to  be  understood  only  as  '  Sir,  (or  Madam,) 
I  proffer  you  that  deference  which  I  owe  and  am  ready  to 
pay  to  all  my  brethren  of  the  Human  Family  V  If  they  mean 
this,  and  be  tendered  in  sincerity,  very  well.  But  I  appre 
hend  that  they  are  often  intended  to  express  more  than  this 
—  to  indicate  a  peculiar  consideration  or  regard,  which  is 
not  and  can  not  be  so  widely  cherished.  If  this  be  so,  it  be- 
19 


218  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORM. 

comes  the  teacher  to  warn  against  it  as  a  virtual  falsehood, 
and  directly  leading  to  the  meanest  of  vices.  He  who  does 
not  shrink  from  acting  a  lie  will  not  hesitate,  when  strongly 
tempted,  to  utter  one  ;  and  the  teacher  who  begins  by  exact 
ing  for  himself  or  requiring  toward  others  any  farther  indi 
cations  of  deference  than  are  prompted  by  the  inmost  heart 
has  launched  his  pupils  blindly  on  an  inlet  of  shams  and 
seemings,  whence  the  tide  sets  strongly  out  to  the  broad 
ocean  of  insincerity,  hypocrisy,  and  all  dishonesty. 

I  return  to  consider  more  fully  the  great  end  of  all  true 
Education  —  that  of  qualifying  and  inspiring  to  do  good.  He 
whose  life  is  consecrated  to  the  enhancement  of  general  well- 
being,  the  diminution  of  wrong  and  wretchedness,  is  well 
educated,  or  needs  farther  instruction  only  to  increase  his 
efficiency  in  well-doing,  or  to  teach  him  how  he  may  surely 
discriminate  between  the  truly  good  and  the  speciously, 
seeming  good.  Paul's  education  was  perfected,  not  at  the  feet 
of  Gamaliel,  but  on  his  journey  to  Damascus.  We  have 
only  to  consider  how  many,  or  rather,  how  few  —  have  dedi 
cated  their  lives  to  the  widest  diffusion  of  good,  and  we  shall 
realize  how  low  is  the  state  and  standard  of  Education  among 
us,  and  throughout  the  world.  We  shall  find  on  one  hand  an 
institute  for  instruction  in  the  art  of  throat-cutting  and  joint- 
fracturing,  and  on  the  other  a  college  for  the  education  of 
surgeons  to  heal  the  mangled  bodies  ;  and  a  little  farther  oh 
a  seminary  which  turns  out  divines  for  the  cure  of  gangrened 
souls.  So  far,  Education  would  seem  to  be  balancing  its 
results,  and  likely  to  leave  the  world  nearly  as  well  as  it  found 
it,  if  we  could  forget  that  one  battery  will  in  an  hour  cut 
out  work  enough  to  last  many  surgeons  for  weeks,  and  that 
the  saving  of  perverted  souls  is  hardly  less  difficult  than  the 
healing  of  maimed  bodies.  That  the  world  should  realize 
as  the  fruit  of  such  training  many  Murats  or  Neys  to  one 
Howard  is  inevitable.  Yet  I  can  not  suppress  the  convic 
tion  that  all  our  instruction  looking  to  special  ends — to 


TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING.  219 

make  of  the  student  a  lawyer,  doctor,  engineer,  merchant,  or 
some  such — is  so  shaped  and  managed  as  often  to  narrow 
and  dwarf  the  intellect  it  is  intended  to  sharpen.  Each  of  us 
is  trained  for  and  started  upon  some  special  path,  and  incited 
to  pursue  it  with  primary  reference  not  to  general  good  but 
to  his  own.  Not  many  of  the  children,  even  of  Piety  or 
Philanthropy,  are  urged  to  inquire  out  and  select  that 
sphere  wherein  they  may  contribute  most  directly  and  essen 
tially  to  the  general  weal,  while  thousands  on  thousands  are 
practically  taught  to  consider  only  what  career  will  probably 
secure  them  the  most  abundant  supply  of  goods  and  chattels. 
From  this  pervading  taint  of  selfishness,  not  even  the  incul 
cations  of  the  pulpit  are  absolutely  exempt.  Men  are  ex 
horted  to  become  religious,  not  so  much  because  they  ought 
as  because  they  must,  if  they  would  avoid  the  most  fearful 
penalties  and  wroes.  Hence  many  a  man  is  impelled  to  strain 
every  nerve  to  secure  the  saving  of  his  soul,  leaving  out  of 
view  entirely  the  preliminary  matter  of  having  any  soul  to 
save.  Whenever  the  time  shall  come  that  all  men  really 
have  souls,  their  salvation  will  not  be  so  arduous  a  work  and 
need  not  absorb  so  much  effort  and  attention. 

I  would  not  if  I  could  conceal  from  you  my  conviction 
that,  before  Education  can  become  what  it  should  and  must 
be,  we  must  reform  the  Social  Life  whence  it  proceeds, 
whitherto  it  tends.  To  the  child  daily  sent  out  from  some 
rickety  hovel  or  miserable  garret  to  wrestle  with  Poverty  and 
Misery  for  such  knowledge  as  the  teacher  can  impart,  what 
true  idea  or  purpose  of  Education  is  possible  ?  How  can  he 
be  made  to  realize  that  his  daily  tasks  concern  the  Soul,  the 
World,  and  Immortality?  He  may  have  drilled  into  his 
ears  day  after  day  the  great  truth  that  '  the  life  is  more  than 
meat  and  the  body  more  than  raiment,'  but  so  long  as  his 
own  food  and  raiment  are  scanty  and  precarious,  his  mind 
will  be  engrossed  by  a  round  of  petty  and  sordid  cares. 
(I  speak  here  of  the  general  fact ;  there  will  be  striking  in- 


220  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

stances  of  the  contrary  —  brilliant  exceptions  which  do  not 
disprove  but  establish  the  rule  I  have  indicated.)  But  the 
child  whose  little  all  hitherto  of  life  has  been  passed  in  penury 
and  consequent  suffering — who  lives  in  the  constant  presence, 
on  the  very  brink,  of  Want  —  how  can  he  have  a  higher 
idea  of  Life  than  that  it  is  a  struggle  for  bread,  or  of  Edu 
cation  than  that  it  is  a  contrivance  for  getting  bread  more 
easily  or  more  abundantly,  or  else  a  useless  addition  to  his 
toils  and  cares?  He  whose  energies  have  been,  must  be, 
taxed  to  keep  starvation  at  bay,  can  hardly  realize  that 
Life  has  truer  ends  than  the  avoidance  of  pain  and  the 
satisfaction  of  hunger.  The  narrow,  dingy,  squalid  tene 
ment,  calculated  to  repel  any  visiter  but  the  cold  and 
the  rain,  is  hardly  fitted  to  foster  lofty  ideas  of  Life,  its 
Duties  and  its  Aims.  He  who  is  constrained  to  ask  each 
morning,  i  Where  shall  I  find  food  for  the  day?'  is  at  best 
unlikely  often  to  ask,  '  By  what  good  deed  shall  the  day  be 
signalized  ?'  Well  did  the  Divine  Teacher  enjoin  His  fol 
lowers  to  '  take  no  thought  for  the  morrow,'  and  difficult 
will  be  the  work  of  imbuing  the  general  mind  with  any  lofty 
ideal  of  Life  and  its  ends  until  this  commandment  can  be 
obeyed  in  verity,  and  until  such  obedience  can  be  made  to 
comport  with  the  dictates  of  a  reasonable  forecast  and  with 
that  care  for  his  own  household,  lacking  which  the  be 
liever  is  *  worse  than  an  infidel.' 

And  herein  is  the  true  foundation  for  that  protest  against 
the  divorce  of  Learning  from  Labor  which  the  world  has 
not  yet  begun  to  comprehend,  or  at  least  to  treat  with  decent 
consideration.  The  advocates  of  Manual  Labor  as  an  es 
sential  ingredient  of  a  true  Education  cherish  no  fanatical 
regard  for  Physical  Toil  as  alone  deserving  the  name  and 
rewards  of  Labor.  They  quite  well  understand  and  freely 
concede  that  much  true  Work  has  been  done,  elsewhere 
than  in  the  fields  and  the  factories ;  they  know  and  cheer 
fully  admit  that  the  sage  in  his  closet,  the  astronomer 


TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING.  221 

in  his  observatory,  the  legislator  in  the  capitol,  may  be 
among  the  noblest  and  most  deserving  of  toilers  for  uni 
versal  good.  But  it  is  not  given  to  all  men,  nor  to  most,  to 
advance  the  general  well-being  from  such  exalted  positions. 
The  ship  Common  Weal  can  not  be  navigated  from  the 
quarter-deck  alone;  she  needs  men  at  the  ropes  as  well  as 
the  speaking-trumpet,  the  wheel  and  the  lead.  It  being 
thus  certain  that  the  many  must  live  by  hard  labor,  only  the 
few  by  mental  exertion  solely,  it  does  seem  the  most  obvious 
dictate  of  prudence  and  wisdom  that  all  should  be  qualified 
for  efficiency  in  that  sphere  which  may  become  the  lot  of 
any,  and  in  which  energy  and  skill  will  at  all  events  insure 
a  subsistence,  independent  of  the  opinion  of  others.  Here, 
for  illustration,  is  a  youth  just  qualifying  himself  to  enter 
upon  the  stage  of  active  life,  who  desires  and  expects  to  be 
a  clergyman,  a  physician,  or  a  lawyer,  and  must  at  all  events 
earn  his  bread  in  some  sphere  of  manly  exertion.  He  can 
not  glide  from  one  profession  to  another  like  a  harlequin  on 
the  stage  ;  he  must  choose  one  and  abide  his  fortune  therein. 
But  suppose  he  should  find,  after  exhausting  all  his  means  in 
fitting  himself  for  his  chosen  career,  that  he  can  not  succeed 
therein  without  a  compromise  of  principle,  a  base  deference 
to  prejudice  or  falsehood  —  suppose,  if  a  clergyman,  he  can 
not  preach  all  the  truth  that  is  made  plain  to  his  mind 
without  incurring  ecclesiastical  censure  and  ignominy  — 
or  as  a  physician,  he  stumbles  upon  some  discovery  in  ad 
vance  of  his  age,  which  raises  the  hiss  of  scorn  from  his 
brethren,  as  did  Jenner's  discovery  of  the  great  antidote  for 
Small  Pox  or  Harvey's  theory  of  the  Circulation  of  the 
Blood  —  or  suppose  that,  as  a  I^awyer,  he  find  or  fancy  such 
an  oppugnancy  between  the  maxims  and  usages  of  the  craft 
and  the  dictates  of  a  stern  integrity  that  he  can  only  succeed 
in  the  practice  by  kicking  Conscience  overboard  and  giving 
the  command  to  circumspect,  respectable  Knavery  —  what 
alternative  has  the  man  educated  to  live  only  by  his  profes- 
19* 


222  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

sion  but  to  take  the  broad  road  and  keep  it,  at  whatever 
internal  sacrifice  ?  A  Prime  Minister  once,  to  the  courtier 
who  said  to  him  '  I  must  live,  you  know,'  replied,  '  Pardon 
me,  Sir,  I  do  not  perceive  the  necessity,'  but  rarely  has  any 
one  so  decided  in  his  own  case.  Even  if  living  be  to  him 
personally  a  matter  of  indifference,  there  are  those  dependent 
on  his  exertions  whom  he  can  not  so  stoically  resign  to  the 
buffetings  of  adverse  fortune.  Hence  a  life  of  mean  com 
pliances  and  self-condemned  hypocrisies  becomes  a  sort 
of  necessity  to  thousands  —  nay,  often,  the  seeming  dictate 
of  paternal  or  conjugal  duty.  Thus  the  landmarks  which 
should  separate  Vice  from  Virtue  are  broken  down,  defaced, 
obliterated,  and  the  ends  of  life  are  lost  sight  of  in  g.  des 
perate,  degrading  struggle  for  the  means  of  living. 

The  most  effectual  remedy  for  this  which  is  attainable 
under  our  present  Social  Order  is  the  blending  of  Manual 
Labor  with  Education,  so  that  they  should  be  inseparable  by 
the  wealth  or  personal  distinction  of  the  learner.  Let  it  be 
settled,  as  a  fundamental  base  of  our  higher  Popular  Educa 
tion,  that  a  stated  portion  of  each  day  shall  be  devoted  to  the 
acquisition  of  skill  in  some  department  of  Industry  —  to  Man 
ual  Labor  for  the  sake  of  the  strength  it  imparts,  the  disor 
ders  it  baffles,  the  comforts  it  creates,  the  independence  it 
secures,  and  the  professional  man  may  then  stand  up  before 
his  flock,  his  patients,  his  clients,  in  an  attitude  of  conscious 
self-reliance,  and  say  to  them,  "  Employ  and  requite  me  if 
you  choose  :  the  earth  and  the  kindly  elements  will  reward 
my  efforts  if  you  do  not  want  them  ;  and,  so  long  as  vegeta 
tion  proceeds  and  sunshine  follows  the  shower,  I  can  exist 
as  well  without  you  as  you  can  without  me.  I  have  learned  to 
labor  efficiently  with  my  hands  ;  and  I  am  neither  afraid  nor 
ashamed  to  do  so,  and  whenever  I  have  no  other  employ 
ment  I  shall  joyfully  earn  my  bread  thus."  Surely,  the 
opinions  and  inculcations  of  the  professional  man  in  this  at 
titude  would  deserve  and  command  a  degree  of  respect 


TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING.  223 

which  is  not  now  accorded  to  them.  He  could  never  more 
be  rendered  the  slave  of  others'  vices  or  prejudices ;  he 
would  be  master  of  his  own  aims  if  not  of  his  destiny. 
The  humiliating,  fettering  consciousness  that  any  reckless 
following  of  Conscience  out  of  ihe  track  of  Prescription  or 
Tradition  would  almost  entirely  deprive  him  of  bread, 
would  vanish  for  ever.  In  its  stead  would  come  self-respect 
and  serenity  ;  and  not  self-respect  only,  but  the  respect  of 
those  made  to  realize  that  his  livelihood  did  not  depend  on 
his  conformity  to  the  standard  of  their  opinions  or  desires. 
My  profound  conviction  that  the  independence,  adequate  in 
fluence  and  proper  dignity  of  the  better  Educated  or  Pro 
fessional  Class  imperatively  demands  a  reform  in  our  systems 
of  instruction  which  shall  render  the  educated  man  skillful 
as  well  as  knowing,  handy  as  well  as  long-headed,  will  not 
allow  me  to  neglect  any  fair  opportunity  of  proclaiming  and 
insisting  on  the  requisition  of  Manual  Labor  as  an  integral 
part  of  our  better  Education.  Not  for  their  own  sakes  merely, 
though  greatly  for  those,  do  I  insist  that  the  Thinking  Class 
shall  become  a  Working  Class  in  the  rude,  palpable  sense. 
I  demand  a  more  brotherly  relation  between  the  man  who 
lives  by  turning  clods  and  him  who  strives  to  turn  hearts. 
That  spectacle  of  the  Emperor  of  China  standing  forth  un 
der  the  vernal  sun  a  guider  of  the  plow,  can  you  think  that 
it  has  no  worth,  no  meaning,  but  as  a  state  ceremonial  —  a 
relic  of  bygone  ages?  I  tell  you  Nay!  —  it  is  to-day,  and 
will  be  while  time  and  it  endures,  a  most  inspiring,  benefi 
cent  Reality  and  no  sham.  That  single  act  shall  lighten  the 
heavy  burthen  on  millions  of  aching  shoulders — shall  make 
the  poorest  and  most  heart-weary  delver  in  all  China 
more  hopeful  and  joyous,  at  all  events  less  miserable,  than 
he  else  would  be.  Who  shall  deem  himself  degraded 
or  dishonored  by  a  calling  which  the  Sovereign  Majesty 
takes  pleasure  and  pride  in  following,  if  not  constantly 
yet  statedly,  as  if  to  say  that  he  would  cleave  to  it  daily 


224  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

did  not  imperious  duties  and  the  welfare  of  Three  Hun 
dred  Millions  sternly  forbid  ?  Rely  on  it,  there  is  no 
other  day  in  all  the  year  when  the  '  Brother  of  the  Sun  and 
Moon'  does  half  so  much  toward  the  right  governing  of  those 
Millions  as  on  that  day  when  he  turns  the  sward  beneath  the 
gaze  of  exulting  thousands.  Herein  does  he  prove  himself 
truly  a  Ruler,  and  more  —  a  Teacher,  by  indisputable  ex 
ample —  of  truths  which,  if  once  universally  accepted  and 
lived,  would  make  Governing  easy  and  outward,  forcible 
Government  a  quite  subordinate  matter.  For  let  men  but 
profoundly  realize  the  dignity  and  true  meaning  of  Labor 

—  let  them  feel  that  not  the  fruits  of  it  alone  are,  but  the  work 
itself  is  desirable,  essential  to  the  well-being  of  every  son 
and  daughter  of  Adam,  and  it  is  not  possible  that  standing 
Armies  and  Armories,  Forts  and  Magazines,  multitudinous 
Police  and  Tipstaves,  would  be  requisite  to  keep  men  from 
plundering  and  throttling  each  other,  mainly  for  sordid  pelf. 
It  is  the  divorce  of  Work  from  the  visible  reward  and  out 
come  of  Work — of  laudable  exertion  from  the    palpable 
need  of  exertion — which  fills  the  world  with  knaves  and 
dastards,  almost  beyond  the  power  of  Authority  to  repress. 

When  that  day  shall  have  come  which  must  come,  which 
sees  the  truth  that  lurks  in  our  aphorisms  transferred  to  our 
popular  convictions — when  men  shall  find  the  highest  re 
ward  of  doing  good  in  being  good — when  the  heir  of  Wealth 
shall  rejoice  in  his  good  fortune,  in  being  able,  not  to  fare 
more  daintily  and  live  more  uselessly  than  his  poorer  neigh 
bors,  but  to  relieve  more  distress  and  diffuse  more  blessing 

—  when  the  public  opinion,  not  of  the  poor  only  but  of  the 
rich,  shall  hold  the  consumer  in  idle  and  selfish  luxury  of  a 
bounteous  income  a  craven-hearted  object  of  pity  rather  than 
of  scorn — when  he  who  in  cheerful  poverty  and  serene  hu 
mility  most  worthily  hews  out  from  stubborn  wood  or  more 
obstructive  stone  the  sustenance  of  a  numerous  family,  shall, 
unseeking,  be  sought  out  for  public  trusts  and  honors  — 


TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING.  225 

when,  in  short,  honest  Industry  and  modest  Worth  shall  be 
sure  of  respect  and  competence,  while  scheming  Knavery 
and  bloated  Pretence  shall  be  equally  sure  of  detection  and 
defeat — the  work  of  the  true  teacher  will  be  easy,  the  prog 
ress  of  the  pupil  rapid,  compared  with  what  we  now  witness. 
The  perpetual  and  gigantic  obstacle  which  confronts  the  in 
structor  now  is  the  opposition  of  the  incessant  teachings  of 
the  street,  the  gathering,  and  alas!  the  family  fireside,  to 
his  own.  Does  he  speak  reverently  of  Virtue  and  its  su 
periority  to  Rank,  Wealth,  Power,  or  any  outward  success 
—  he  finds  his  pupils  puzzled  if  not  perverted  by  the  palpable, 
notorious  truth  that,  tested  by  superficial  and  vulgar  stan 
dards,  Virtue  is  not  popularly  esteemed  and  rewarded.  The 
coterie  or  the  club-room  rings  with  the  general  laugh  at 
any  supposition  that  a  man  has  done  a  heroic  act  —  has  sac 
rificed  popularity  or  property  from  any  other  than  a  sordid 
impulse,  and  the  child  is  taught,  if  not  expressly  yet  vir 
tually,  by  the  very  mother  that  bore  him,  to  ingratiate  him 
self  with  school-mates  excelling  him  in  station,  affluence, 
talents,  expectations  —  anything,  in  short,  but  essential  good 
ness.  To  combat  and  overbear  these  insidious  influences, 
to  make  the  pupil  see  through  the  misleading  mists  of  Opin 
ion  and  test  every  appearance  and  event  by  eternal  instead 
of  transitory  consequences,  is  the  high  duty  of  the  true 
monitor  and  guide  of  the  feeble,  faltering  steps  of  Youth. 
At  the  basis  of  all  Morality,  all  true  Knowledge,  all  lofty 
Endeavor,  lies  the  truth  that  GOD  REIGXS.  I  doubt  not  that 
there  have  been  many  worthy  and  useful  men  whose  con 
sciousness  of  this  truth  was  obscured  —  whose  minds  the 
subtle  mazes  of  metaphysical  disputation  had  clouded  or  the 
pride  of  scientific  attainment  had  made  giddy,  so  that,  be 
wildered  in  the  very  vastness  and  magnificence  of  the  Uni 
verse,  they  had  lost  sight  of  its  Creator.  I  disclaim  all  im 
peachment  of  the  morals  or  characters  of  unbelievers  when 
I  say  that  I  find  it  utterly  impossible  to  demonstrate  the  cer- 


226  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

tain  and  unvarying  superiority  of  Virtue  to  Vice,  of  Right 
to  Wrong,  if  there  be  no  Discerner  and  Ruler  of  all  things. 
I  know  and  have  said  that  the  truly  good  man  will  do  right 
though  the  Heavens  were  all  swept  from  his  vision,  and  this 
earth  alone  were  left,  whirling  aimless  and  unguided  through 
the  depths  of  infinite  space.  But  the  question  is,  How  shall 
we  first  convince  the  young  mind  that  Virtue  is  more  de 
sirable,  more  precious  than  Pleasure  ?  How  shall  we  de 
monstrate  to  the  passion-fired,  hot-blooded  youth,  that  the 
act  which  would  yield  him  present  ecstacy  and  yet  may  be 
shielded  by  secrecy  from  infamy  or  penalty  is  to  be  shunned 
and  avoided  at  all  hazards  because  it  is  in  its  tendencies  ad 
verse  to  general  purity  and  well-being.  Such  unvarying 
resistance  to  temptation  is  plainly  beyond  the  power  of  skep 
tical  morality.  Not  vainly  is  Joseph  solicited  if  Atheism 
possess  his  understanding — never  fruitlessly  does  Satan 
proffer  '  all  the  kingdoms  of  this  world'  to  one  who  has  no 
belief  in  any  other.  Archimedes  must  have  a  place  whereon 
to  stand  or  he  can  not  move  the  world  ;  and  I  see  not  how 
Virtue  can  be  implanted  in  the  human  soul  so  firmly  as  to 
defy  the  blandishments  of  seduction,  the  tempest-gusts  of 
Passion,  the  dazzling  lures  of  Ambition,  if  it  be  not  rooted 
and  grounded  in  that  faith  '  which  entereth  within  the  veil' 
and  undoubtingly  realizes  that  every  action  is  noted  by  Om 
niscience  and  rewarded  by  Omnipotent  Justice. 

Mere  recognition  of  God  as  an  Architect  is  not  sufficient: 
still  less  is  belief  in  Him  as  a  blind  Power — like  the  Des 
tiny  of  the  Greek  Drama  or  the  Fatalism  which  challenges 
the  Turk's  submission.  Worse  still  is  the  vulgar  idea  of 
him  as  an  African  Mumbo-Jumbo,  to  be  placated  by  flat 
tery  or  won  over  by  servile  compliances  in  place  of  practical 
and  hearty  obedience.  Whoever  truly  knows  Him  as  He 
is,  knows  that  no  act  nor  thought,  whether  good  or  evil,  can 
possibly  fail  of  its  due  recompense,  and  that  all  attempts  to 
evade  this  by  finesse  or  formula  are  at  once  preposterous  and 


TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING.  227 

audacious.  That  His  mercy  to  the  erring  and  the  penitent 
never  faileth,  is  a  glorious,  cheering  truth ;  but  vainly  shall 
any  hope  for  Vice,  penitent  on  its  death-bed,  the  rewards  of 
enduring  Virtue.  Were  He  but  known  as  He  is,  we  should 
have  more  lives  of  active  beneficence  and  fewer  death-beds 
of  abject  repentance  when  too  late  to  be  of  any  earthly  use. 
No  Louis  XV.  worn  out  with  fifty  years  of  debauchery  and 
tyranny,  would  think  of  '  making  the  amende  honorable  to 
God'  by  mumbling  a  wafer  and  a  prayer  in  his  death-throes, 
but  all  would  realize  that  '  Whatsoever  a  man  soweth  that 
shall  he  also  reap,'  and  that  the  Virtue  which  holds  its  even 
way  through  life,  realizing  that  God  governs  and  judges  here 
as  well  as  elsewhere,  is  alone  deserving  of  his  favor  or  calcu 
lated  to  secure  it,  and  that  hardly  to  Heaven  itself  is  it  pos 
sible  to  efface  utterly  from  the  soul  the  stains  of  a  career 
of  guilt  and  shame,  save  through  the  purifying  fires  of  a 
righteous  and  fearful  retribution. 

I  draw  to  the  close  of  my  hour ;  yet  how  shall  I  close 
without  attempting  to  impress  on  your  minds  the  great  truth 
that  JtZducation  can  never  be  what  it  ought  until  a  vast  and 
pervading  improvement  has  been  wrought  in  the  Social  and 
Physical  Condition  of  the  destitute  Millions  of  mankind .  In 
vain  shall  we  provide  capable  teachers  and  comfortable  school 
rooms,  and  the  most  admirable  school-books,  apparatus,  libra 
ries,  &c.,  for  those  children  who  come  shivering  and  skulking 
in  rags  —  who  sit  distorted  by  the  gnawings  of  hunger  or  suf 
fering  from  the  effects  of  innutritions  or  unwholesome  food  — 
who  must  sleep  huddled  in  cellars  or  garrets  unfit  even  for 
dog-kennels,  hard  Necessity  overruling  all  distinctions  of  age 
or  sex  and  crowding  Modesty  through  the  unglazed  window 
to  keep  company  with  exiled  Decency  outside.  You  may 
fill  the  hovels  of  the  famishing  with  Bibles  and  Tracts,  suf 
ficient  to  replace  the  chairs  and  tables  which  famine  and  the 
landlord  have  sent  to  the  pawnbroker,  yet  you  can  not  ren 
der  those  who  grow  up  under  such  influences  religious  nor 


228  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

moral ;  you  may  cram  them  with  Popularized  Science  and 
convert  them  into  infant  prodigies  of  intellect  and  culture, 
and  they  will  yet  be  deplorably  uneducated,  untrained,  un 
developed.  No  stimulation  of  one  or  two  faculties  ever  yet 
produced  a  true  or  useful  human  character,  nor  ever  will. 
The  education  which  does  not  begin  worthily  in  the  cradle 
can  rarely  result  in  eminent  worth  or  honor.  Idly  shall  you 
labor  to  teach  the  child  whose  earliest  recollections  are  of 
torturing  hunger  or  of  cloying  surfeit  that  Food  is  not  an 
end  of  life  but  a  means  of  sustaining  it — vainly  shall  you 
moralize  to  him  whose  youth  was  rendered  bitter  and  abject 
by  Want  that  Wealth  is  but  an  added  responsibility  and  not 
necessarily  a  sovereign  good.  The  actualization  of  grosser 
vice  may  be  shunned  from  instinct,  or  fear,  or  habit ;  but  the 
soul's  native  purity  and  delicacy  can  not  be  preserved  where 
a  single  garret  is  made  to  afford  the  sleeping  accommoda 
tions  of  a  numerous  family,  nor  can  monitorial  precepts 
restore  it  while  the  influences  which  wrought  its  destruction 
are  still  present  and  potent.  It  will  be  idle  to  expect  true, 
beneficent  attainment  in  school  from  those  who  have  not  the 
means  of  decent  and  comfortable  existence  at  home.  You 
may  sharpen  their  wits ;  you  may  awaken  in  them  a  dread 
of  shame  or  pain  and  a  resolution  to  avoid  them.  But  to 
impress  the  solemn  injunctions,  *  Thou  shalt  not  steal,' 
'Thou  shalt  not  covet,'  on  him  who  daily  casts  famine- 
sunken  eyes  on  the  fruit  ripening  and  rotting  in  the  rich 
man's  orchards,  and  who  feels  that  the  fuel  which  would 
warm  his  benumbed  limbs  is  moldering  to  dust  in  the  ad 
jacent  wood,  unused  and  unwanted,  this  is  the  impossible 
task ;  yet  who  shall  be  deemed  educated  whose  heart 
festers  with  rebellion  against  these  essential  command 
ments  ? 

Not  until  we  shall  have  achieved  the  emancipation  of  the 
Poor  from  the  slavery  of  physical  and  absolute  destitution  — 
not  till  we  shall  have  rendered  possible  to  all  obedience  to 


TEACHERS  AND  TEACHING.  229 

the  Divine  precept,  *  Take  no  thought  for  the  morrow,'  — 
not  till  we  shall  have  relieved  all  who  will  work  from  the 
terror  of  constrained  idleness  and  consequent  starvation,  can 
I  feel  that  a  secure  basis  has  been  laid  for  Universal  Educa 
tion.  There  will  still  remain  obstacles  in  abundance  — 
obstacles  originating  in  perverted  appetites,  impetuous  pas 
sions,  narrow-minded  parentage,  false  pride,  mental  inca 
pacity,  and  the  like  ;  but  before  all  these  I  place  the  impedi 
ments  arising  from  extreme  indigence  and  the  degradations 
and  dangers  which  have  thence  their  origin.  Let  this  be 
removed,  and  we  shall  have  better  opportunity  to  appreciate 
and  encounter  the  residue. 

Universal  Education  !  grand  inspiring  idea !  And  shall 
there  come  a  time  when  the  delver  in  the  mine  and  the  rice- 
swamp,  the  orphans  of  the  prodigal  and  the  felon,  and  even 
the  very  offspring  of  shame,  shall  be  truly,  systematically 
educated  ?  Glorious  consummation  !  morning  twilight  of 
the  Millennium  !  Who  will  not  joyfully  labor  and  court  sacri 
fices,  and  suffer  reproach,  if  he  may  hasten,  by  even  so  much 
as  a  day,  its  blessed  coming  ?  Who  will  not  take  courage 
from  a  contemplation  of  what  the  last  century  has  seen 
accomplished,  if  not  in  absolute  results,  yet  in  preparing  the 
approaches,  in  removing  impediments,  in  correcting  and  ex 
panding  the  popular  comprehension  of  the  work  to  be  done 
and  the  feasibility  of  doing  it?  Whatever  of  evil  and  of 
suffering  the  Future  may  have  in  store  for  us — though  the 
earth  be  destined  yet  to  be  plowed  by  the  sword  and  fer 
tilized  by  human  gore  until  rank  growths  of  the  deadliest 
weeds  shall  overshadow  it,  stifling  into  premature  decay 
every  plant  most  conducive  to  health  or  fragrance  —  the  time 
shall  surely  come  when  universal  and  true  Education  shall 
dispel  the  dense  night  of  ignorance  and  perverseness  that  now 
enshrouds  the  vast  majority  of  the  Human  Race  —  shall 
banish  evil  and  wretchedness  almost  wholly  from  earth 
20 


230  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

by  removing  or  unmasking  the  multiform  temptations  to 
wrong-doing  —  shall  put  an  end  to  Robbery,  Hatred,  Oppres 
sion,  and  War,  by  diffusing  widely  and  thoroughly  a  living; 
consciousness  of  the  Brotherhood  of  Mankind,  and  the  sure 
blessedness  as  well  as  righteousness  of  doing  ever  as  we 
would  have  others  do  to  us.  '  Train  up  a  child  in  the  way 
he  should  go,  and  when  he  is  old  he  will  not  depart  from  it,' 
such  is  the  promise  which  enables  us  to  see  to  the  end  of  the 
dizzy  whirl  of  wrong  and  misery  in  which  our  Race  has  so 
long  sinned  and  suffered.  On  wise  and  systematic  training, 
based  on  the  widest  knowledge,  the  truest  morality,  and  tend 
ing  ever  to  universal  good  as  the  only  assurance  of  special 
or  personal  well-being,  rests  the  great  hope  of  the  terrestrial 
renovation  and  elevation  of  man. 

Not  the  warrior  then,  nor  the  statesman,  nor  yet  the 
master-worker,  as  such,  but  the  teacher,  in  our  day  leads  the 
vanguard  of  Humanity.  Whether  in  the  seminary  or  by  the 
wayside,  by  uttered  word  or  printed  page,  our  true  king  is 
not  he  who  best  directs  the  siege  or  sets  his  squadrons  in  the 
field,  or  heads  the  charge,  but  he  who  can  and  will  instruct 
and  enlighten  his  fellows,  so  that  at  least  some  few  of  the 
generation  of  whom  he  is  shall  be  wiser,  purer,  nobler  for  his 
living  among  them,  and  prepared  to  carry  forward  the  work 
of  which  he  was  a  humble  instrument  to  its  far  grander  and 
loftier  consummation.  O  far  above  the  conqueror  of  king 
doms,  the  destroyer  of  hosts  by  the  sword  and  the  bayonet,  is  he 
whose  tearless  victories  redden  no  river  and  whiten  no  plain, 
but  who  leads  the  understanding  a  willing  captive  and  builds 
his  empire  not  of  the  wretched  and  bleeding  fragments  of 
subjugated  nations,  but  on  the  realms  of  intellect  which  he 
has  discovered  and  planted  and  peopled  with  beneficent 
activity  and  enduring  joy  !  The  mathematician  who  in  his 
humble  study,  undisturbed  as  yet  by  the  footsteps  of  mon- 
archs  and  their  ministers,  demonstrates  the  existence  of  a 
planet  before  unsuspected  by  astronomy,  unobserved  by  the 


TEACHERS  AN1)  TEACHING.  231 

telescope  ;  the  author  who  from  his  dim  garret  sends  forth  the 
scroll  which  shall  constrain  thousands  on  thousands  to  laugh 
or  weep  at  his  will  —  who  topples  down  a  venerahle  fraud 
by  an  allegory,  or  crushes  a  dynasty  by  an  epigram  —  he 
shall  live  and  reign  over  a  still  expanding  dominion  when 
the  paste-board  kings  whose  steps  are  counted  in  court  cir 
culars  and  timed  by  stupid  huzzas  shall  have  long  since 
moldered  and  been  forgotten.  To  build  out  into  chaos  and 
drear  vacuity  —  to  render  some  corner  of  the  primal  darkness 
radiant  with  the  presence  of  an  Idea  —  to  supplant  ignorance 
by  knowledge  and  sin  by  virtue  —  such  is  the  mission  of  our 
age,  worthy  to  enkindle  the  ambition  of  the  loftiest,  yet 
proffering  opportunity  and  reward  to  the  most  lowly.  To 
the  work  of  universal  enlightenment  be  our  lives  henceforth 
consecrated,  until  the  black  clouds  of  impending  evil  are 
irradiated  and  dispersed  by  the  full  effulgence  of  the  divinely 
predicted  day,  when  '  All  shall  know  the  LORD  from  the 
least  unto  the  greatest,'  and  when  wrong  and  woe  shall 
vanish  for  ever  from  the  presence  of  universal  knowledge, 
purity,  and  bliss ! 


232  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 


VIII. 

LABOR'S  POLITICAL   ECONOMY: 

AN    ESSAY.* 

THE  Political  Economy  of  Trade  is  very  simple  and  easy. 
4  Buy  where  you  can  cheapest  and  sell  where  you  can 
dearest,'  is  its  fundamental  maxim  ;  the  whole  system  radiates 
from  this.  l  Take  care  of  yourself  and  let  others  do  as 
they  can,'  is  its  natural  and  necessary  counterpart.  Nay, 
this  Economy  insists  that  the  best  you  can  do  for  your 
neighbor  and  for  mankind  is  to  do  whatever  your  individ 
ual  interest  shall  prompt.  That  I  do  not  misunderstand  and 
may  not  be  plausibly  accused  of  misstating  the  scope  of  the 
Free  Trade  doctrine,  so  far  as  it  applies  to  the  action  of 
states  and  communities,  I  will  show  by  the  following  extract 
from  'M'Culloch's  Principles  of  Political  Economy:' 

"Admitting,  however,  that  the  total  abolition  of  the  prohibitive 
system  might  force  a  few  thousand  workmen  to  abandon  their  present 
occupations,  it  is  material  to  observe  that  equivalent  new  ones  would, 
in  consequence,  be  open  to  receive  them ;  and  that  the  total  aggre 
gate  demand  for  their  services  would  not  be  in  any  degree  diminished. 
Suppose  that,  under  a  system  of  free  trade,  we  imported  a  part  of  the 
silks  and  linens  we  now  manufacture  at  home  ;  it  is  quite  clear,  inas 
much  as  neither  the  French  nor  Germans  would  send  us  their  com 
modities  gratis,  that  we  should  have  to  give  them  an  equal  amount  of 
British  commodities  in  exchange  ;  so  that  such  of  our  artificers  as  had 
been  engaged  in  the  silk  and  linen  manufactures,  and  were  thrown  out 

*  Mainly  embodied  in  an  American  Introduction  to  'Atkinson's  Political  Econ 
omy.' 


LABOR'S  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  233 

of  them,  would,  in  future,  obtain  employment  in  the  production  of  the 
articles  that  must  be  exported  as  equivalents  to  the  foreigner.  We 
may,  by  giving  additional  freedom  to  commerce,  change  the  species  of 
labor  in  demand,  but  we  can  not  lessen  its  quantity" 

Here,  in  the  essay  of  one  of  the  ablest  and  most  admired 
doctors  of  the  Free  Trade  school,  you  see  the  ground  fairly 
marked  out,  and  the  consequences  of  depressing  and  de 
stroying  a  particular  branch  of  Home  Industry  enunciated. 
True,  says  the  doctor,  you  throw  many  out  of  employ 
ment  in  that  particular  branch,  but  you  thereby  inevitably 
create  a  corresponding  demand  for  their  labor  in  some  other 
capacity.  The  cotton-spinner,  the  wool-carder,  the  carpet- 
weaver,  may  no  longer  have  work  in  the  vocations  to  which 
they  were  bred  and  in  which  they  are  skilled,  but  then  there 
will  be  so  much  the  more  work  in  growing  wheat,  picking 
cotton  or  salting  pork.  I  do  not  see  the  advantage  of  the 
change,  to  Labor  even,  affirmed  in  this  statement,  though  it 
is  not  difficult  to  imagine  that  Trade  may  experience  a  falla 
cious  and  transitory  improvement.  But,  while  the  merchant 
may  just  as  easily  ship  or  sell  one  article  as  another,  the 
laborer  can  not  with  like  facility  change  from  casting  iron  to 
growing  corn,  from  weaving  broadcloth  to  chopping  timber, 
and  so  on.  To  compel  him  to  give  up  his  accustomed  em 
ployment  and  seek  some  other  is  generally  to  doom  him  to 
months  of  unwilling  idleness  followed  by  years  of  relatively 
ineffective  toil.  The  overthrow  of  an  important  branch  of 
National  Industry  is  therefore  a  serious  calamity  to  a  great 
portion  of  the  Laboring  Class  —  a  blow  which  will  be  felt  for 
years. 

But,  thus  far,  I  have  conceded  the  main  point  assumed 
by  M'Culloch  and  his  school  that  the  destruction  of  a  branch 
of  Home  Industry  by  the  influx  of  rival  Foreign  fabrics  is 
necessarily  followed  by  a  corresponding  extension  of  some 
other  branch  or  branches,  giving  employment  to  an  equal 
amount  of  labor,  and  rendering  the  depression  of  Industry 
20* 


234  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

only  temporary.  That  this  is  a  mistake,  a  few  moments' 
reflection  will  establish.  It  assumes  that  the  consumption 
of  a  given  article  is  not  diminished  by  the  transfer  of  its  pro 
duction  from  the  consumers'  neighborhood  to  a  distant 
shore,  and  that  wherever  a  community  receives  its  supply  of 
cloths  or  wares  from  abroad,  it  necessarily  follows  that  some 
staple  or  staples  of  equal  value  will  be  taken  of  it  by  the 
supplying  nation  in  return.  To  prove  that  the  fact  is  not  so, 
I  cite  the  memorable  instance  of  the  Dacca  weavers  of  India, 
as  stated  in  Parliament  by  the  distinguished  Free  Trader, 
Dr.  Bowring : 

"  I  hold,  Sir,  in  my  hand,  the  correspondence  which  has  taken  place 
between  the  Governor-General  of  India  and  the  East  India  Company, 
on  the  subject  of  the  Dacca  hand-loom  weavers.  It  is  a  melancholy 
story  of  misery  so  far  as  they  are  concerned,  and  as  striking  an  evidence 
of  the  wonderful  progress  of  manufacturing  industry  in  this  country. 
Some  years  ago  the  East  India  Company  annually  received  of  the  prod  - 
uce  of  the  looms  of  India  to  the  amount  of  from  six  to  eight  millions  of 
pieces  of  cotton  goods.  The  demand  gradually  fell  to  somewhat  more 
than  one  million,  and  has  now  nearly  ceased  altogether.  In  1800,  the 
United  States  took  from  India  nearly  eight  hundred  thousand  pieces 
of  cottons;  in  1830  not  four  thousand.  In  1800,  one  million  of  pieces 
were  shipped  to  Portugal ;  in  1830,  only  twenty  thousand.  Terrible 
are  the  accounts  of  the  wretchedness  of  the  poor  India  weavers,  re 
duced  to  absolute  starvation.  And  what  was  the  sole  cause  ?  The 
presence  of  the  cheaper  English  manufacture  —  the  production  by  the 
power-loom  of  the  article  which  these  unhappy  Hindoos  had  been  used 
for  ages  to  make  by  their  unimproved  and  hand-directed  shuttles. 
Sir,  it  was  impossible  that  they  could  go  on  weaving  what  no  one 
would  wear  or  buy.  Numbers  of  them  died  of  hunger  :  the  remainder 
were,  for  the  most  part,  transferred  to  other  occupations,  principally 
agricultural.  Not  to  have  changed  their  trade  was  inevitable  starva 
tion.  And  at  this  moment,  Sir,  that  Dacca  district  is  supplied  with 
yarn  and  cotton  cloth  from  the  power-looms  of  England.  The  language 
of  the  Governor-General  is  : 

"  •  European  skill  and  machinery  have  superseded  the  produce 
of  India.  The  court  declare,  that  they  are  at  last  obliged  to  aban 
don  the  only  remaining  portion  of  the  trade  in  cotton  manufactures, 
in  both  Bengal  and  Madras,  because,  through  the  intervention  of 


LABOR'S  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  235 

power-looms,  the  British  goods  have  a  decided  advantage  in  quality 
and  price.  Cotton  piece-goods,  for  so  many  ages  the  staple  manufac 
ture  of  India,  seems  thus  forever  lost.  The  Dacca  muslins,  celebrated 
over  the  whole  world  for  their  beauty  and  fineness,  are  also  annihilated, 
from  the  same  cause.  And  the  present  suffering,  to  numerous  classes 
in  India,  is  scarcely  to  be  paralleled  in  the  history  of  commerce." 

Here  you  see  are  Mr.  M'Culloch's  conditions  made  ready 
to  his  hand.  1.  The  people  of  India  were  formerly  supplied 
with  cotton  fabrics  from  the  hand-looms  of  their  own 
Dacca  weavers.  2.  They  are  now  supplied  with  such 
fabrics  much  cheaper  (that  is,  at  lower  money  prices)  from 
the  power-looms  of  England.  3.  India  being  a  dependency 
of  Great  Britain,  the  goods  of  the  latter  enter  the  former  sub 
stantially  free  of  duty,  and  have  completely  supplanted  and 
ruined  the  native  manufacture.  4.  But,  though  this  has  now- 
existed  some  thirty  years  or  more,  the  supplanted  Hindoo 
spinners  and  weavers  do  not  (at  least,  they  certainly  did  not, 
and  their  case  is  not  yet  materially  improved)  find  employ 
ment  in  new  branches  of  industry  created  or  expanded  to 
provide  the  means  of  payment  for  the  British  fabrics  imported 
in  lieu  of  their  own.  5.  That  in  consequence,  "  Terrible 
are  the  accounts  of  the  wretchedness  of  the  poor  Indian 
weavers,  reduced  to  the  verge  of  starvation."  [Yes,  and 
many  of  them  beyond  it.]  And  6.  That  the  evil  was  by  no 
means  confined  to  the  weavers,  but  that  the  present  suffering 
of  "  numerous  classes,"  (those  whom  Free  Traders  say 
Protection  would  tax  for  the  benefit  of  the  weaver)  "  is 
scarcely  to  be  paralleled  in  the  history  of  Commerce." 

Here  is  the  Free  Traders'  theory  confronted  by  a  Free 
Trader's  notorious  and  undeniable  facts.  Can  anything 
farther  be  needed  to  demonstrate  the  fallacy  of  the  former, 
so  far  as  it  assumes  unrestricted  competition  to  be  favorable 
to  the  interest  of  Labor? 

Political  Economy  is  among  the  latest  born  of  the  Sci 
ences.  Mainly  intent  on  the  horrid  game  of  War,  with  its 


236  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

various  reverses  and  only  less  ruinous  successes,  it  is  but 
yesterday  that  the  rulers  of  the  world  discovered  that  they 
had  any  duty  to  perform  toward  Industry,  other  than  to  in 
terrupt  its  processes  by  their  insane  contentions,  to  devastate 
its  fields,  and  ultimately  to  consume  its  fruits.  And,  when 
the  truth  did  penetrate  their  scarcely  pervious  skulls,  it  came 
distorted  and  perverted  by  the  resistance  it  had  met,  by 
selfish  and  sinister  influences,  so  that  it  had  parted  with  all 
its  vitality,  and  was  blended  with  and  hardly  distinguishable 
from  error.  When  it  began  to  be  dimly  discerned  that  Gov 
ernment  had  a  legitimate  duty  to  perform  toward  Industry  — 
that  the  latter  might  be  cherished,  improved,  extended  by 
the  action  of  the  former — legislators  at  once  jumped  to  the 
conclusion  that  all  possible  legislation  upon  and  interference 
with  Industry  must  be  beneficial.  A  Frederick  the  Great 
finds  by  experience  that  the  introduction  of  new  arts  and 
industrial  processes  into  his  dominions  increases  the  activity, 
thrift  and  prosperity  of  his  People  ;  forthwith  he  rushes  (as 
Macaulay  and  the  Free  Trade  economists  represent  him) 
into  the  prohibition  of  everything  but  coin  from  abroad,  and 
the  production  of  everything  at  home,  without  considering 
the  diversities  of  soil  and  climate,  or  the  practicability  of 
here  prosecuting  to  advantage  the  business  so  summarily 
established.  The  consequence  is  of  course  a  mischievous 
diversion  of  Labor  from  useful  and  productive  to  profitless 
and  unfruitful  avocations.  But  this  is  not  the  worst.  Some 
monarch  finds  himself  unable  to  minister  adequately  to  the 
extravagance  of  some  new  favorite  or  mistress  ;  so  he  creates 
in  her  favor  a  Monopoly  of  the  supply  and  sale  of  Salt, 
Coffee,  or  whatever  else  is  not  already  monopolized,  and 
styles  it  a  "  regulation  of  trade,"  to  prevent  ruinous  fluctu 
ations,  competitions,  and  excesses  !  Thus  private  ends  are 
subserved  under  the  pretence  of  public  good,  and  the  com 
forts  of  the  people  abridged  or  withheld  to  pander  to  the 


LABOR'S  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  L'37 

vices    and    sustain   the    lavish    prodigality    of   princes    and 
paramours. 

From  a  contemplation  of  these  abuses,  pierced  and 
uncovered  by  the  expanding  intelligence  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  the  Political  Economy  of  the  Schools  was  evolved. 
In  its  origin  a  protest  against  existing  abuses,  it  shared  the 
common  lot  of  all  reactions,  in  passing  impetuously  to  an  ex 
treme  the  opposite  of  the  error  it  went  forth  to  combat. 
From  a  scrutiny  and  criticism  of  the  gross  abuses  of  the 
power  of  Government  over  Industry,  it  was  impelled  to  the 
conclusion  that  no  such  power  properly  existed  or  could  be 
beneficially  exercised.  Thus  the  Science  became,  in  the 
hands  of  the  latest  professors  of  the  '  enlightened'  school,  a 
simple  and  sweeping  negation  —  a  demand  for  incessant  and 
universal  abolishing  —  a  suicidal  science,  demonstrating  that 
to  do  nothing  is  the  acme  of  governmental  wisdom,  and 
King  Log  die  profoundest  and  greatest  of  monarchs. 

These  conclusions  would  have  staggered  the  founders  of 
the  school,  and  yet  it  is  difficult  to  resist  the  evidence 
offered  to  show  that  they  are  legitimately  deduced  by  their 
disciples  from  the  premises  those  founders  themselves  have 
laid  down. 

There  are  reasons  for  hoping  that  the  raiiction  against  a 
sinister  and  false  regulation  of  Industry  has  spent  its  force, 
and  that  the  error  which  denies  that  any  regulation  can  be 
beneficent  equally  with  the  fraud  which  has  cloaked  schemes 
of  personal  aggrandisement  under  the  pretence  of  guiding 
Industry  aright,  will  alike  cease  to  exert  a  controlling  influ 
ence  over  the  affairs  of  Nations.  Experience,  the  great  cor 
rector  of  delusive  theories,  has  long  since  settled  this  point, 
that  any  attempt  to  grow  Coffee  in  Greenland,  or  dig  Coal 
from  the  White  Mountains,  must  prove  abortive ;  that  same 
Experience,  it  seems  most  obvious,  has  by  this  time 
established  that  it  is  wise,  it  is  well,  for  each  nation  to  draw 
from  its  own  soil  every  desirable  and  necessary  product 


238  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

which  that  soil  is  as  well  calculated  to  produce  as  any  other, 
and  to  fabricate  within  itself  all  articles  of  utility  or  comfort 
which  it  may  ultimately  produce  as  advantageously — that  is, 
with  as  little  labor — as  they  can  be  steadily  produced  else 
where.  To  do  this  may  require  fostering  legislation  at  first 
to  shield  the  infant  branches  of  Industry  against  the  formi 
dable  competition  of  their  adult  and  muscular  rivals,  which 
would  otherwise  strangle  them  in  the  cradle  ;  it  may  require 
efficient  and  steady  Protection  in  after  years,  to  counteract  the 
effects  of  differing  standards  of  money  values,  and  different 
rates  of  wages  for  Labor — nay,  of  the  disturbing  rivalries  and 
ruinous  excesses  of  mere  foreign  competition,  which  often  leads 
to  underselling  at  the  door  of  a  rival,  (especially  if  that  rival 
be  shut  out  from  retaliation  by  duties  on  the  other  side)  when 
living  prices  are  maintained  at  home.  A  protected  branch 
of  Industry — cloth-making,  for  instance  —  might  thus  over 
throw  an  unprotected  rival  interest  in  another  nation  without 
selling  its  products  at  an  average  price  lower  than  that  of  the 
latter.  Having  its  own  Home  Market  secured  to  it,  and  un 
limited  power  given  it  to  disturb  and  derange  the  markets 
necessarily  relied  on  by  its  rival,  it  would  inevitably  cripple 
and  destroy  that  rival,  as  the  mailed  and  practiced  swordsman 
cuts  down  in  the  field  of  combat  the  unarmed  and  defense 
less  adversary  whom  fate  or  fatuity  has  thrown  within  his 
reach. 

Those  who  profess  an  inability  to  see  how  Protection  can 
benefit  the  producer  if  it  does  not  raise  the  average  price  of 
his  product  contradict  not  merely  the  dictates  of  a  uniform 
experience  but  the  clearest  deductions  of  reason.  The 
artisan  who  makes  pianofortes,  say  at  three  hundred  dollars 
each,  having  a  capricious  demand  for  some  twenty  or  thirty 
per  year,  and  liable  at  any  time  to  be  thrown  out  of  business 
by  the  importation  of  a  cargo  of  pianofortes — will  he  pro 
duce  them  cheaper  or  dearer,  think  you,  if  the  foreign 
rivalry  is  cut  off,  and  he  is  thence  enabled  to  find  a  steady 


LABOR'S  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  239 

market  for  some  twelve  instruments  per  month  ?  Admit  that 
his  natural  tendency  will  be  to  cling  to  the  old  price,  and 
thereby  secure  larger  profits  —  this  will  be  speedily  corrected 
by  a  Home  Competition,  which  will  increase  until  the  profits 
are  reduced  to  the  average  profits  of  business.  It  will  not  be 
in  the  power  of  the  Home  as  it  is  of  the  Foreign  rival  inter 
ests  to  depress  his  usual  prices  without  depressing  their  own 
—  to  destroy  his  market  yet  preserve  and  even  extend 
theirs  —  to  crush  him  by  means  of  cheaper  labor  than  he 
can  obtain.  If  vanquished  now,  it  will  be  because  his 
rapacity  is  unequal  to  that  of  his  rivals — not  that  circum 
stances  inevitably  predict  and  prepare  his  overthrow.  No 
intelligent  man  can  doubt  that  Newspapers,  for  example,  are 
cheaper  in  this  country  than  they  would  be  if  Foreign  jour 
nals  could  rival  and  supplant  them  here  as  Foreign  cloths 
may  rival  and  supplant  in  our  markets  the  corresponding 
products  of  our  own  Country.  The  rule  will  very  generally 
hold  good,  that  those  articles  of  Home  Production  which  can 
not  be  rivaled  by  Importation  are  and  will  be  relatively 
cheaper  than  those  of  a  different  character. 

And  here  it  maybe  well  to  speak  more  directly  of  the  dis 
crepancy  between  Theory  and  Practice  which  is  so  often 
affirmed  in  connection  writh  our  general  subject.  There  are 
many  who  think  the  theory  of  Free  Trade  the  correct,  or  at 
any  rate  the  more  plausible  one,  but  who  yet  maintain, 
because  they  know  by  experience,  that  it  fails  practically  of 
securing  the  good  it  promises.  Hence  they  rush  to  the  con 
clusion  that  a  policy  may  be  faultless  in  theory  yet  pernicious 
in  practice,  than  which  no  idea  can  be  more  erroneous  and 
pernicious.  A  good  theory  never  yet  failed  to  vindicate 
itself  in  practical  operation  —  never  can  fail  to  do  so.  A 
theory  can  only  fail  because  it  is  defective,  unsound  —  lacks 
some  of  the  elements  which  should  have  entered  into  its 
composition.  In  other  words,  the  practical  working  is  bad 
only  because  the  theory  is  no  better. 


240  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Let  us  consider,  for  illustration,  the  fundamental  maxim 
of  Free  Trade,  '  Buy  where  you  can  buy  cheapest.'  This 
sounds  well  and  looks  plausible.  But  let  us  hold  it  up  to 
the  light :  What  is  '  cheapest  ?'  Is  it  the  smallest  sum  in 
coin  ?  No  —  very  far  from  it ;  and  here  is  where  the  theory 
gives  way.  We  do  not,  as  a  nation,  produce  coin  —  do  not 
practically  pay  in  coin.  We  pay  for  products  in  products, 
and  the  real  question  first  to  be  resolved  is,  Whence  can  we 
obtain  the  desired  fabrics  for  the  smaller  aggregate  of  our 
products  —  from  the  Foreign  or  the  Home  manufacturer? 
Take  Woolen  Cloths,  for  instance  :  We  require  of  them,  say 
One  Hundred  Millions'  worth  per  annum.  Now  the  point 
to  be  considered  is  not  where  we  could  buy  most  cloths  for 
One  Hundred  Millions  in  money,  for  that  we  have  not  to 
pay  ;  but  where  our  surplus  product  of  Pork,  Lumber,  Dairy 
Produce,  Sheep,  Wool,  &c.  &c.  will  buy  the  required  Cloth 
most  advantageously.  The  nominal  or  Money  price  paid 
for  it  may  be  Eighty  Millions  or  One  Hundred  and  Twenty 
Millions,  and  yet  the  larger  sum  be  easier  paid  than  the 
smaller  —  that  is,  with  a  smaller  amount  of  our  Produce. 
The  relative  Money  prices  do  not  determine  the  real  ques 
tion  of  cheapness  at  all  —  they  may  serve,  if  implicitly  relied 
on,  to  blind  us  to  the  merits  of  that  question.  In  the  absence 
of  all  regulation,  the  relative  Money  price  will  of  course  de 
termine  whether  the  cloths  shall  be  imported  or  produced  at 
home,  but  not  whether  they  should  be. 

But  this  is  not  all.  We  may  obtain  a  desired  product 
to-day  and  fitfully  cheaper  abroad,  and  yet  pay  more  for  it 
in  the  average  than  if  we  produced  it  steadily  at  home.  The 
question  of  cheapness  is  not  determined  by  a  single  transac 
tion  but  by  many.* 

And  again  :  We  can  not  buy  to  advantage  abroad  that 
which,  being  bought  abroad,  leaves  whole  classes  of  our 
people  to  famish  at  home.  For  instance ;  Suppose  one 

*  Madison's  Messages,  1811-15-16. 


LABOR'S  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  241 

hundred  millions  of  garments  are  made  by  the  women  of 
this  country  yearly  at  an  average  price  of  twenty-five  cents 
each,  and  these  could  be  bought  abroad  for  two-thirds  of 
that  sum  :  Would  it  be  wise  so  to  buy  them  ?  Free  Trade 
asserts  that  it  would  —  that  all  the  labor  so  thrown  out  of 
employment  would  be  promptly  absorbed  in  other  and  more 
productive  occupations.  But  sad  experience,  common 
sense,  humanity,  say  Not  so.  The  truth  is  very  different 
from  this.  The  industry  thus  thrown  out  of  its  time-worn 
channels  would  find  or  wear  others  slowly  and  with  great 
difficulty ;  meantime  the  hapless  makers,  no  longer  enabled 
to  support  themselves  by  labor,  must  be  supported  in  idle 
ness.  By  indirect  if  not  by  public  charity  they  must  some 
how  be  subsisted;  and  our  citizens  will  have  bought  their 
garments  some  twenty  per  cent,  lower  from  abroad,  but  will 
be  compelled  to  pay  another  price  for  them  in  charities  and 
poor-rates.  Such  is  the  effect  of  '  Buying  where  we  can  buy 
cheapest'  in  a  low,  short-sighted,  miserly,  Free-Trade  view 
of  cheapness. 

But  why,  it  is  asked,  should  not  a  Nation  purchase  of 
others  as  freely  as  individuals  of  the  same  nation  are  permit 
ted  to  trade  with  each  other  ?  Fairly  as  this  question  would 
seem  to  be  put,  there  is  a  fatal  fallacy  lurking  beneath  its 
use  of  the  term  '  nation.'  A  nation  should  always  buy 
where  it  can  (in  the  long  run)  '  buy  cheapest,'  or  most  ad 
vantageously  ;  where  that  may  be  is  a  question  for  the 
nation,  through  its  legal  organism,  to  decide.  The  query 
mistakenly  assumes  that  the  immediate,  apparent  interest  of 
each  individual  purchaser  is  always  identical  with  the  inter 
est  of  the  community,  which  common  sense  as  well  as  ex 
perience  refutes.  The  lawyer  or  clergyman  in  Illinois  may 
obtain  his  coat  of  the  desired  quality  cheaper  (for  less  money) 
from  Paris  than  it  can  be  fabricated  in  Illinois,  yet  it  by  no 
means  follows  that  it  is  the  interest  of  Illinois  to  purchase 
her  coats  or  cloths  from  Europe  —  quite  the  contrary  is  the 
21 


242  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

fact.  Nay,  it  would  be  easy  to  show  that  the  real,  permanent 
interest  of  the  lawyer  or  clergyman  himself — certainly  of  his 
class  —  is  subserved  by  legislation  which  encourages  and 
protects  the  home  producer  of  those  articles,  not  only  because 
they  improve  in  quality  and  are  reduced  in  price  under  such 
a  policy,  but  because  the  sources  of  his  own  prosperity  and 
income  are  expanded  or  dried  up  as  the  Industry  of  his  own 
region  is  employed,  its  capacities  developed,  and  its  sphere 
of  production  enlarged  and  diversified.  Let  us  illustrate  this 
truth  more  fully : 

The  state  of  Illinois,  for  example,  is  primarily  grain- 
growing,  producing  a  surplus  of  five  millions  of  bushels  of 
Wheat  and  Indian  Corn  annually,  worth  in  New-York  four 
millions  of  dollars,  and  requiring  in  return  ten  millions  of 
yards  of  Cloths  of  various  kinds  and  qualities,  costing  in 
New- York  a  like  sum.  In  the  absence  of  all  legislation,  she 
purchases  and  consumes  mainly  English  cloths,  which  can 
be  transmitted  from  Leeds  to  Chicago  in  a  month,  at  a  cost, 
including  insurance  and  interest,  of  not  more  than  five  per 
cent,  and  there  undersell  any  Illinois  fabricator  of  cloths 
equal  in  quality  and  finish.  Is  it  the  real,  permanent  in 
terest  of  Illinois  (disregarding  the  apparent  momentary  interest 
of  this  or  that  class  of  persons  in  Illinois)  to  persist  in  Free 
Trade  ?  or,  on  the  other  hand,  to  concur  in  such  legislation 
as  will  insure  the  production  of  her  cloths  mainly  at  home  ? 
Here  is  opened  the  whole  question  between  Free  Trade  and 
Protection. 

The  advocate  of  Free  Trade  insists  that  the  solution  of 
the  problem  lies  plain  on  the  surface.  The  British  broad 
cloth  is  offered  in  abundance  for  three  dollars  per  yard  ;  the 
American  is  charged  twenty  per  cent,  higher,  and  can  not 
be  afforded  for  three  dollars.  The  true  course  is  obvious 
— '  Buy  where  you  can  buy  cheapest.'  But  the  advocate 
of  Protection  answers  that  the  real,  intrinsic  cheapness 
is  not  determined  by  the  market  price  of  the  rival  fabrics 


LABOR'S  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  213 

in  coin  —  specie  not  being  the  chief  staple  of  Illinois,  nor 
produced  there  at  all — but  where  may  the  required  Cloth  be 
bought  with  the  smallest  amount  of  her  Grain  ?  Is  not  this 
true  ?  What  avails  it  to  Illinois  that  she  may  have  Cloth 
from  England  twenty  per  cent,  cheaper  if  she  is,  by  purchas 
ing  her  supply  thererconstrained  to  sell  her  Grain  at  half 
price  or  less  ?  Let  us  see,  then,  what  is  the  inevitable  fact : 

That  we  can  not  buy,  perpetually,  without  paying  —  that 
in  paying  for  a  single  article,  we  must  regard,  not  how  much 
the  payment  is  called,  but  how  much  it  is,  (that  is,  the 
amount  of  Products  absorbed  in  paying  for,  or  of  the  Labor 
expended  in  producing  it)  —  we  assume  to  be  obvious 
or  sufficiently  demonstrated.  Let  us  now  consider  what 
will  be  the  inevitable  cost  to  Illinois  —  the  real  cost —  of  one 
million  yards  of  broadcloth  obtained  from  England  as  com 
pared  with  the  same  cloth  produced  at  home. 

The  average  value  of  Wheat  throughout  the  world  is  not 
far  from  one  dollar  per  bushel,  varying  largely,  of  course, 
in  different  localities  ;  in  the  heart  of  a  grain-growing  region, 
away  from  manufactures  or  navigation,  it  must  fall  greatly 
below  that  standard  ;  in  other  districts,  where  consumption 
considerably  exceeds  production,  rendering  a  resort  to  im 
portation  necessary,  the  price  rises  above  the  average  stand 
ard.  The  price  at  a  given  point  is  determined  by  its  prox 
imity  to  a  market  for  its  surplus  or  a  surplus  for  its  market. 
Great  Britain  does  not  produce  as  much  as  will  feed  her 
own  population  ;  hence  her  average  price  must  be  governed 
by  the  rate  at  which  she  can  supply  her  deficiency  from 
abroad ;  Illinois  produces  in  excess,  and  the  price  there 
must  be  governed  by  the  rate  at  which  she  can  dispose  of 
her  surplus,  including  the  cost  of  its  transportation  to  an  ade 
quate  market.  In  other  words,  (all  regulation  being  thrown 
aside)  the  price  which  England  must  pay  must  be  the  price 
at  the  most  convenient  foreign  marts  of  adequate  supply, 
adding  the  cost  of  transportation  ;  while  the  grain  of  Illinois 


244  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

will  be  worth  to  her  its  price  in  the  ultimate  market  of  its 
surplus,  less  the  cost  of  sending  it  there. 

Now  the  great  grain-growing  plains  of  Poland  and  South 
ern  Russia,  with  capacities  of  production  never  yet  half 
explored,  even  —  with  Labor  cheaper  than  it  ever  can  or 
should  be  in  this  country  —  are  producing  Wheat  in  the  inte 
rior  at  fifty  cents  a  bushel  or  lower,  so  that  it  is  ordinarily 
obtained  at  Dantzic  on  the  Baltic  for  ninety  cents  per 
bushel  and  at  Odessa  on  the  Black  Sea  for  eighty,  very 
nearly.  With  a  Free  Trade  in  grain,  Britain  can  be  abun 
dantly  supplied  from  Europe  alone  at  a  cost  not  exceeding 
one  dollar  and  ten  cents  per  bushel  ;  with  a  competition  from 
America,  the  average  price  in  her  ports  would  more  prob 
ably  range  from  one  dollar  to  one  dollar  and  six  cents.  What, 
then,  is  the  prospect  for  Illinois,  buying  her  Cloths  from 
Great  Britain,  and  compelled  to  sell  somewhere  her  Grain  to 
pay  for  them  ? 

That  she  could  not  sell  elsewhere  her  surplus  to  such  ex 
tent  as  would  be  necessary,  is  obvious.  The  ability  of  the 
Eastern  States  to  purchase  the  produce  of  her  fertile  prairies 
depends  on  the  activity  and  stability  of  their  Manufactures  — 
depends,  in  short,  on  the  market  for  their  manufactures  in 
the  Great  West.  The  markets  to  which  we  can  resort,  in 
the  absence  of  the  English,  are  limited  indeed.  In  point  of 
fact,  the  rule  will  hold  substantially  good,  though  trivial  ex 
ceptions  are  presented,  that,  IN  ORDER  TO  PURCHASE  AND 
PAY  FOR  THE  MANUFACTURES  OF  GREAT  BRITAIN,  ILLINOIS 
MUST  SELL  TO  THAT  COUNTRY  THE  GREAT  BULK  OF  HER 
SURPLUS  OF  AGRICULTURAL  PRODUCTIONS. 

The  rates  at  which  she  must  sett  this  surplus,  we  have 
already  seen  ;  the  cost  of  transporting  it  is  easily  computed. 
Seventy-five  cents  per  bushel  is  considerably  below  the 
average  cost  of  transporting  Wheat  from  the  prairies  of  Illi 
nois  to  England,  but  that  may  be  assumed  as  a  fair  average 
for  the  next  ten  years,  in  view  of  the  improvements  being 


LABOR'S  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  245 

made  in  the  means  of  transportation.  There  is  then  left  to 
the  Illinois  farmer  —  to  Illinois  —  thirty  cents  per  bushel  as 
the  net  proceeds  of  her  surplus  of  Wheat  or  one  million  five 
hundred  thousand  dollars  for  the  five  millions  of  bushels  — 
purchasing,  at  three  dollars  per  yard,  five  hundred  thousand 
yards  of  broadcloth.  This  would  be  the  net  product  under 
Free  Trade. 

Now  the  same  inevitable  law  which  depresses  the  price  of 
Wheat  in  Illinois  so  far  below  that  prevailing  in  England,  so 
long  as  the  one  is  wholly  Agricultural,  the  other  predomi 
nantly  Manufacturing,  will  as  surely  raise  the  price  in  Illinois 

SO  SOOX  AXD  SO  FAST  AS  A  SUFFICIENT  MARKET  FOR  HER 
SURPLUS  IS  BROUGHT  XEARER  TO  HER  DOORS.  Let  that  Slir- 

plus  be  arrested  by  an  adequate  market  in  New-England,  and 
its  price  will  rise  to  fifty  cents  a  bushel  ;  let  the  supply  of 
her  Manufactured  products  be  drawn  by  Illinois  from  points 
West  of  the  Alleghenies,  and  it  will  rise  to  seventy-five 
cents  ;  and,  whenever  they  are  mainly  produced  on  her  own 
territory,  the  price  will  have  advanced  to  one  dollar  per 
bushel.  In  other  words,  the  net  produce  of  her  grain  to 
Illinois  will  be  the  average  price  throughout  the  world,  less 
the  cost  of  transporting  it  to  the  point  at  which  an  adequate 
market  for  her  surplus  is  attained.  There  may  be  casuaJ 
and  special  exceptions,  but  this  is  the  fundamental  law. 

Now  it  is  evident  that,  though  Illinois  may  buy  he* 
cloths  for  fewer  dollars  from  England,  she  can  buy  them 
with  fewer  bushels  of  Grain  from  our  own  manufactories, 
and  fewer  still  when  the  progress  of  improvement,  unde* 
a  steady  and  careful  Protection  to  our  Industry,  shall  havf* 
established  most  branches  of  Manufacture  on  her  own  soiL 
She  may  pay  twenty-five  per  cent,  higher  nominal  price* 
for  her  fabrics,  and  yet  obtain  them  at  one-half  the  actua* 
cost  at  which  she  formerly  obtained  them  from  abroad- 
In  other  words,  by  bringing  the  producers  of  Cloth  from 
21* 


246  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

England  to  America,  and  placing  them  side  by  side  with 
the  producers  of  Grain,  she  has  effected  an  enormous 
SAVING  OF  LABOR  —  of  that  Labor,  namely,  which  was 
before  employed  in  trasporting  Grain  and  Cloth  from  con 
tinent  to  continent.  One  hundred  thousand  grain-growers 
and  cloth-makers  produce  just  as  much  now  as  they  did 
with  four  thousand  miles  of  land  and  water  between  them, 
while  they  no  longer  require  the  services  of  another  hundred 
thousand  persons  as  boatmen,  sailors,  shippers,  forwarders, 
&c.,  to  interchange  their  respective  products.  These  now 
become  producers  themselves.  By  thus  diminishing  vastly 
the  number  of  non-producers  and  adding  to  that  of  pro 
ducers,  the  aggregate  of  production  is  immensely  increased, 
increasing  in  like  measure  the  dividends  of  Capital  and  fhe 
rewards  of  Labor. 

Such  is  the  process  by  which  wise  Protection  increases 
the  prosperity  of  a  country,  quite  apart  from  its  effect  in 
discouraging  ruinous  fluctuations  and  competition,  whereby 
thousands  of  producers  are  frequently  thrown  out  of  em 
ployment  and  thence  out  of  bread.  It  is  this  multiplying 
and  diversifying  of  the  departments  of  Home  Industry, 
bringing  the  farmer,  the  artisan,  the  manufacturer  into  im 
mediate  contact  with  each  other,  and  enabling  them  to  inter 
change  their  products  without  the  intervention  of  several 
non-producers,  which  is  justly  regarded  as  the  great  end  of 
an  enlightened  and  paternal  policy.  To  guard  against  the 
changes,  fluctuations,  depressions,  which  an  unbounded  com 
petition  and  rivalry  are  sure  to  induce,  is  also  well  worthy 
of  effort ;  but  the  primary  aim  of  Protection  is  to  secure  a 
real  cheapness  of  production  and  supply,  instead  of  the 
nominal,  indefinite,  deceptive  cheapness  which  Free  Trade 
obtains  by  looking  to  the  money  price  only  of  the  staples 
purchased. 

—  But  why,  it  is  asked,  have  we  need  of  any  legislation 
on  the  subject,  if  the  Home  Trade  and  Home  Production 


LABOR'S  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  247 

be  so  much  more  beneficial  than  Foreign  ?  The  answer  to 
this  question  is  made  obvious  by  the  foregoing  illustrations. 
The  individual  farmer,  lawyer,  teacher,  of  Illinois  might  with 
Free  Trade  obtain  the  Foreign  fabrics  cheaper  than  the 
Domestic,  escaping,  or  seeming  to  escape,  the  consequent 
reduction  in  the  price  of  Domestic  staples  which  we  have 
seen  to  be  the  result  of  a  resort  to  distant  countries  for  the 
great  bulk  of  desirable  fabrics;  but  the  community  could  not 
escape  it.  On  the  other  hand,  the  individual  might  perceive 
clearly  the  true  policy  to  be  pursued  by  all ;  but  how  could 
he  effect  its  adoption  except  through  the  action  of  the  Gov 
ernment?  The  Farmer,  producing  a  thousand  bushels  of 
Grain,  might  see  clearly  that  the  general  encouragement  of 
Home  Manufactures  would  build  up  a  Home  Market  for 
Grain  at  a  more  adequate  price  ;  but  his  buying  Domestic 
fabrics  instead  of  Foreign,  while  importation  remained  unre 
stricted,  and  the  majority  purchased  abroad,  would  answer 
no  purpose  whatever.  It  would  only  condemn  him  to  sell 
his  products  for  a  still  smaller  return  than  the  meager  one 
which  Free  Trade  vouchsafed  him. 

On  this  point  it  seems  obvious  that  the  inculcations  of  our 
leading  Political  Economists  must  be  revised  —  the  sole 
cisms  which  they  imbody  have  grown  too  glaring  and  vital 
to  be  longer  endured.  The  distinction  between  real  and 
merely  nominal  or  money  cheapness  in  marts  of  supply  must 
be  acknowledged  and  respected,  or  the  flagrant  contrarieties 
of  Fact  and  Theory  will  impel  the  practical  world  to  distrust 
and  ultimately  to  discard  the  theory  and  its  authors. 

But  not  less  mistaken  and  short-sighted  than  the  First 
Commandment  of  the  Free  Trade  Decalogue  —  'Buy  where 
you  can  cheapest'  —  is  the  kindred  precept,  '  Laissez  faired 
—  'Let  us  alone.'  That  those  who  are  profiting,  amassing 
wealth  and  rolling  in  luxury,  from  the  proceeds  of  some  craft 
or  vocation  gainful  to  them  but  perilous  and  fraught  with 
evil  to  the  common  weal,  should  strive  to  lift  this  maxim 


248  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

from  the   mire  of  selfishness  and  heartless   indifference  to 
others'  woes  to  the  dignity  of  Statesmanship,  is  not  remark 
able  ;  but  that  any  one  seriously  claiming  to  think  and  labor 
for  National  or  Social  well-being  should  propound  and  de 
fend  it,  this  is  as  amazing  as  lamentable.     Regarded  in  the 
light  of  Morality,  it  can  not  stand  a  moment :  it  is  identical 
in   spirit  with  the  sullen  insolence  of  Cain  —  *  Am  I  my 
brother's  keeper?'     If  it  be,  indeed,  a  sound  maxim,  and  the 
self-interest  of  each  individual — himself  being  the  judge  — 
be  necessarily  identical  with  the  common  interest,  then  it  is 
difficult  to  determine  why  Governments  should  exist  at  all  — 
why  constraint  should  in  any  case  be  put  on  the  action  of 
any  rational  being.     But  it  needs  not  that  this  doctrine  of 
'  Laissez  faire'  should  be  traced  to  its  ultimate  results,  to 
show  that  it  is  inconsistent  with  any  true  idea  of  the  interests 
of  Society  or  the  duties  of  Government.     The   Genius  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century — the  expanding  Benevolence  and 
all-embracing  Sympathy  of  our  age  —  emphatically  repudiate 
and  condemn  it.     Everywhere  is   Man  awaking  to  a  truer 
and  deeper  regard  for  the  welfare  and  worth  of  his  brother. 
Everywhere  is  it  beginning  to  be  felt  that  a  bare  opportunity 
to  live  unmolested  if  he  can  find  and  appropriate  the  means 
of  subsistence  —  as  some  savages  are  reported  to  cast  their 
new-born  children  into  the  water,  that  they  may  save  alive 
the  sturdy  who  can  swim,  and  leave  the  weak  to  perish — is 
not  all  that  the  community  owes  to  its  feebler  and  less  fortu 
nate  members.     It  can  not  have  needed  the  horrible  deduc 
tions  of  Malthus,  who,  admiringly  following  out  the  doctrine 
of  '  Laissez  faire'  to  its  natural  result,  declares  that  the 
earth  can  not  afford  an  adequate  subsistence  to  all  her  human 
offspring,  and  that  those  who  can  not  find  food  without  the 
aid  of  the  community  should  be  left  to  starve! — to  con 
vince  this    generation  of  the  radical    unsoundness  of  the 
premises   from  which   such    revolting   conclusions  can   be 
drawn.     Our  standard  Political  Economists  mav  theorize  in 


LABOR'S   POLITICAL    ECONOMY.  249 

this  direction  as  dogmatically  as  they  will,  modestly  pro 
nouncing  their  own  views  liberal  and  enlightened,  and  all 
others  narrow  and  absurd ;  but  though  they  appear  to  win 
the  suffrage  of  the  subtle  Intellect,  the  great  Heart  of  Hu 
manity  refuses  to  be  thus  guided  —  nay,  insists  on  impelling 
the  entire  social  machinery  in  an  exactly  opposite  direction. 
The  wide  and  wider  diffusion  of  a  public  provision  for 
General  Education  and  for  the  support  of  the  destitute 
Poor — inefficient  as  each  may  thus  far  have  been;  is  of 
itself  a  striking  instance  of  the  triumph  of  a  more  benignant 
principle  over  that  of  '  Laisscz  faired  The  inquiries,  so 
vigorously  and  beneficently  prosecuted  in  our  day,  into  the 
Moral  and  Physical,  Intellectual  and  Social  condition  of  the 
depressed  Laboring  Classes,  of  Great  Britain  especially  — 
of  her  Factory  Operatives,  Colliers,  Miners,  Silk-Weavers, 
&c.  &c.,  and  the  beneficent  results  which  have  followed 
them,  abundantly  prove  that,  for  Governments  no  less  than 
Communities,  any  consistent  following  of  the  '  Let  us  alone' 
principle,  is  not  merely  a  criminal  dereliction  from  duty  — 
it  is  henceforth  utterly  impossible.  Governments  must  be 
impelled  by  a  profound  and  wakeful  regard  for  the  common 
interests  of  the  People  over  whom  they  exercise  authority, 
or  they  will  not  be  tolerated.  It  is  not  enough  that  they 
repress  violence  and  outrage  as  speedily  as  they  can  ;  this 
affords  no  real  security,  even  to  those  exposed  to  wrong 
doing  :  they  must  search  out  the  causes  of  evil,  the  influ 
ences  which  impel  to  its  perpetration,  and  labor  zealously  to 
effect  their  removal,  They  might  reenact  the  bloody  code 
of  Draco,  and  cover  the  whole  land  with  fruitful  gibbets, 
yet,  with  a  People  destitute  of  Morality  and  Bread  —  nay, 
destitute  of  the  former  alone  —  they  could  not  prevent  the 
iteration  of  every  crime  which  a  depraved  imagination  might 
suggest.  That  theory  of  Government  which  affirms  the 
power  to  punish,  yet  in  effect  denies  the  right  to  prevent 
evil,  will  be  found  as  defective  in  its  Economical  inculca- 


250  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

tions  as  in  its  relations  to  the  Moral  and  Intellectual  wants 
of  Mankind. 

The  great  principle  that  the  Laborer  has  a  Right  of  Prop 
erty  in  that  which  constitutes  his  only  means  of  subsistence, 
is  one  which  can  not  be  too  broadly  affirmed  nor  too  earnestly 
insisted  on.  '  A  man's  trade  is  his  estate  ;'  and  with  what 
justice  shall  one-fourth  of  the  community  be  deprived  of 
their  means  of  subsistence  in  order  that  the  larger  number 
may  fare  a  little  more  sumptuously  or  obtain  what  they  buy 
a  little  more  advantageously?  The  cavil  at  the  abuse  of 
this  principle  to  obstruct  the  adoption  of  all  labor-saving 
machinery,  etc.,  does  not  touch  the  vitality  of  the  principle 
itself.  All  Property,  in  a  justly  constituted  state,  is  held 
subject  to  the  right  of  Eminent  Domain  residing  in  the 
State  itself; — when  the  public  good  requires  that  it  should 
be  taken  for  public  uses,  the  individual  right  must  give  way. 
But  suppose  it  were  practicable  to  introduce  to-morrow  the 
products  of  foreign  needle-work,  for  instance,  at  such  prices 
as  to  supplant  utterly  garments  made  by  our  own  country 
women,  and  thereby  deprive  them  entirely  of  this  resource 
for  a  livelihood — would  it  be  morally  right  to  do  this? 
Admit  that  the  direct  cost  of  the  fabrics  required  would  be 
considerably  less,  should  we  be  justified  in  reducing  a  nu 
merous  and  worthy  class,  already  so  meagerly  rewarded,  to 
absolute  wretchedness  and  pauperism  ?  It  does  not  seem 
that  an  affirmative  answer  can  deliberately  proceed  from  any 
generous  heart. 

I  am  not  forgetting  that  Free  Trade  asserts  that  the 
necessary  consequence  of  such  rejection  of  the  Domestic  in 
favor  of  a  cheaper  Foreign  production  would  be  to  benefit 
our  whole  People,  the  displaced  work-women  included !  — 
that  these  would,  by  inevitable  consequence,  be  absorbed 
in  other  and  more  productive  employments.  I  am  only 
remembering  that  facts,  bold  as  the  Andes  and  numerous  as 
forest-leaves,  confront  and  refute  this  assumption.  To  say 


LABOR'S  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  251 

nothing  of  the  many  instances  in  our  own  country's  expe 
rience,  where  the  throwing  out  of  employment  of  a  whole 
class  of  our  citizens,  owing  to  the  overwhelming  influx  of 
Foreign  fabrics  rivaling  theirs,  has  been  followed,  not  by 
an  increased  but  a  diminished  demand  and  reward  for  labor 
in  other  avocations,  I  need  but  refer  to  the  notorious  in 
stance  already  cited  —  that  of  the  destruction  of  the  Hand- 
Loom  Manufactures  of  India  through  the  introduction  of 
the  cheaper  product  of  the  English  power-looms.  Not  only 
were  the  Hand-Loom  Weavers  themselves  reduced  to  beg 
gary  and  starvation  by  the  change — no  demand  whatever 
for  their  labor  arising  to  take  the  place  of  that  which  had 
been  destroyed — but  other  classes  were  inevitably  involved 
in  their  calamity,  while  none  in  India  realized  any  percep 
tible  benefit  unless  it  were  a  very  few  '  merchant  princes,' 
who  fed  and  fattened  on  the  misery  and  starvation  of  mil 
lions  of  their  doomed  countrymen. 

And  here,  as  everywhere,  it  is  observable  that  no  indi 
vidual  action  could  have  arrested  the  mighty  evil.  If  every 
person  intelligent  enough  to  perceive  the  consequences  of 
encouraging  the  Foreign  instead  of  the  Domestic  fabric  had 
early  and  resolutely  resolved  never  to  use  any  but  the  latter, 
and  had  scrupulously  persevered  in  the  course  so  resolved 
on,  what  would  it  have  effected '?  Nothing.  It  wrould  have 
been  but  a  drop  in  the  bucket.  But  an  independent  Gov 
ernment  of  India,  with  intelligence  to  understand  and  virtue 
to  discharge  its  duties  to  the  People  under  its  protecting 
care,  would  have  promptly  met  the  Foreign  fabric  with  an 
import  duty  sufficient  to  prevent  its  general  introduction,  at 
the  same  time  prompting,  if  needful,  and  lending  every  aid  to 
the  exertions  of  its  own  manufacturers  to  imitate  the  labor- 
saving  machinery  and  processes  by  which  the  foreigner  was 
enabled  to  undersell  the  home-producer  of  cotton  fabrics  on 
the  very  soil  to  which  the  cotton-plant  was  indigenous,  and 
from  which  the  fibre  was  gathered  for  the  English  market. 


252  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Such  a  Government  would  have  perceived  that,  in  the  ver$ 
nature  of  things,  it  could  not  be  permanently  advantageous 
to  the  great  working  mass  of  either  People  that  the  Cotton 
should  be  collected  and  transported  from  the  plains  of  India 
about  twice  the  diameter  of  the  globe  to  England,  there  fab 
ricated  into  cloths,  and  thence,  at  some  two  years'  end,  be 
found  diffused  again  over  those  very  plains  of  India,  to  clothe 
its  original  producers.  Obviously,  here  is  an  enormous 
waste  of  time  and  labor  to  no  end  of  general  beneficence  — 
a  waste  which  would  be  avoided  by  planting  and  fostering 
to  perfection  the  manufacture  of  the  Cotton  on  the  soil  where 
it  grew  and  among  the  People  who  produced  and  must  con 
sume  it.  This  policy  would  be  prosecuted  in  no  spirit  of 
envy  or  hostility  to  the  English  manufacture  —  very  far  from 
it — but  in  perfect  conformity  to  the  dictates  of  universal  as 
well  as  national  well-being.  The  cost  of  these  two  im 
mense  voyages,  and  the  commercial  complications  which 
they  involve,  though  falling  unequally  on  the  Agricultural 
and  the  Manufacturing  community  respectively,  yet  fall  in 
some  measure  on  the  latter  as  well  as  the  former ;  they  inevi 
tably  diminish  the  intrinsic  reward  of  Labor  on  either  side 
and  increase  the  mischances  which  affect  the  steadiness  of 
demand  for  that  Labor  and  intercept  that  reward.  Protec 
tion,  as  we  have  seen  in  considering  the  argument  of  cheap 
ness,  must  increase  the  actual  reward  of  both  classes  of  pro 
ducers,  by  diminishing  the  number  of  non-producers  and 
the  amount  of  their  subtraction,  as  such,  from  the  aggregate 
produced.  Yet  this  is  the  policy  stigmatized  by  the  self- 
styled  liberal  and  enlightened  Political  Economists  as  nar 
row  and  partial!  —  as  looking  only  to  local  and  regardless 
of  general  good ! 

The  Moral  effects  of  Protection,  as  resulting  in  a  more 
intimate  relation  and  a  more  symmetrical  proportion  between 
the  various  departments  of  Industry,  can  not  be  too  strongly 
insisted  on.  Capital,  under  the  present  system  of  Society, 


LABOR'S  POLITICAL  ECONONV.  253 

has  a  natural  tendency  to  centralization  ;  and  the  manufac 
ture  of  all  light  and  costly  fabrics,  especially  if  their  cheap 
fabrication  involves  the  employment  of  considerable  capital, 
is  subject  to  a  similar  law.  With  universal  Free  Trade, 
those  countries  which  are  now  foremost  in  Manufactures, 
especially  if  they  at  the  same  time  possess  (as  is  the  case) 
a  preponderance  in  Capital  also,  \vill  retain  and  extend  that 
ascendancy  for  an  indefinite  period.  They  will  seem  to 
afford  the  finer  fabrics  cheaper  than  they  can  be  elsewhere 
produced  ;  they  will  at  any  rate  crush  with  ease  all  daring 
attempts  to  rival  them  in  the  production.  That  this  seem 
ing  cheapness  will  be  wholly  deceptive  we  have  already 
seen,  but  that  is  not  to  our  present  purpose.  The  tendency 
of  Free  Trade  is  to  confine  Agriculture  and  Manufactures 
to  different  spheres  ;  to  make  of  one  country  or  section  a 
Cotton  plantation  ;  of  another  a  Wheat  field  ;  of  a  third  a 
vast  Sugar  estate  ;  of  a  fourth  an  immense  Manufactory,  &c. 
&c.  One  inevitable  effect  of  this  is  to  render  the  Laborer 
moie  dependent  on  the  Capitalist  or  Employer  than  he  other 
wise  would  be  ;  to  make  the  subsistence  of  whole  classes 
depend  on  the  caprices  of  Trade  —  the  endurance  of  For 
eign  prosperity  and  the  steadiness  of  Foreign  tastes.  The 
number  of  hirelings  must  be  vastly  greater  under  this  policy 
than  that  which  brings  the  Farmer,  the  Manufacturer,  the 
Artisan,  into  immediate  vicinage  and  daily  contact  with  each 
other,  and  enables  them  to  interchange  their  products  in 
good  part  without  invoking  the  agency  of  any  third  party, 
and  generally  without  being  taxed  on  whatever  they  con 
sume  to  defray  the  expense  of  vast  transportation  and  of  the 
infinite  complications  of  Trade.  A  Country  or  extensive 
District  whose  product  is  mainly  exported  can  rarely  or 
never  boast  a  substantial,  intelligent  and  virtuous  Yeomanry : 
the  condition  of  the  Laborer  is  too  precarious  and  depend 
ent —  his  average  reward  too  meager.  It  may  have  wealthy 
Capitalists  and  Merchants,  but  never  a  numerous  Middle 

99 


254  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Class,  nor  a  flourishing,  increasing  proportion  of  small  but 
independent  proprietors.  The  fluctuations  of  supply  and 
demand  soon  reduce  all  but  the  few  to  the  dead  level  of  in 
digence  and  a  precarious  dependence  on  wages  for  a  sub 
sistence,  unless  prevented  by  absolute  and  undisguised 
Slavery. 

But  not  alone  in  its  influences  on  the  pecuniary  condition 
and  physical  comforts  of  the  mass  is  the  state  of  things  pro 
duced  by  Free  Trade  conducive  to  their  Social  degradation. 
The  external  influences  by  which  they  are  visibly  surrounded 
are  likewise  adverse  to  their  Intellectual  development  and 
Moral  culture.  The  Industry  of  a  People  is,  to  a  far 
greater  extent  than  has  been  imagined,  an  integral  and  im 
portant  part  of  its  Education.  The  child  whose  infancy  is 
passed  amidst  the  activity  of  a  diversified  Industry — who 
sees  the  various  processes  of  Agriculture,  Manufactures, 
Art,  in  progress  all  around  him,  will  be  drawn  out  to  a  clearer 
and  larger  maturity  of  intellect — a  greater  fullness  of  be 
ing — will  be  more  certain  to  discover  and  adopt  his  own 
proper  function  in  life  —  his  sphere  of  highest  possible  use 
fulness —  than  one  whose  early  years  are  passed  in  famili 
arity  with  the  narrower  range  of  exertion  which  any  one 
branch  of  industry  can  afford.  Foreign  as  this  considera 
tion  may  be  to  the  usual  range  of  Economic  Science,  it  is 
too  vitally  important  to  be  disregarded. 

I  can  not  assent  to  the  vital  proposition  so  generally  as 
sumed  as  self-evident  by  the  Free-Trade  Economists  that 
the  ability  to  give  employment  to  Labor  is  always  in  pro 
portion  to  the  amount  of  Capital,  and  that  the  increase  of 
Capital  as  compared  with  Population  necessarily  leads  to  an 
increase  of  Wages.  I  will  not  deny  that  such  ought  to  le 
the  result  in  a  perfect  state  of  Society ;  that  it  is  the  result  is 
plainly  contradicted  by  glaring  facts.  The  French  Revolu 
tion  diminished  greatly  the  aggregate  of  Property  in  France 
as  compared  with  its  Population,  yet  the  average  rewards  of 


LABOR'S  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  255 

Labor  were  enhanced  thereby.  The  amount  of  Capital  as 
compared  to  Population  is  less  in  America  than  in  England, 
yet  the  rewards  of  Labor  are  here  higher.  On  the  contrary, 
there  are  many  instances  where  the  Wealth  of  a  People  has 
increased,  yet  the  condition  and  rewards  of  its  Laborers, 
with  the  demand  for  Labor,  have  receded.  Political  Econ 
omy  has  yet  to  take  to  itself  a  broader  field  than  that  of 
discovering  the  means  whereby  the  aggregate  Wealth  of  a  na 
tion  may  be  increased  ;  it  must  consider  also  how  its  Labor 
may  be  most  fully  and  equally  rewarded,  and  by  what  means 
the  largest  proportion  of  the  aggregate  increase  of  wealth 
and  comforts  may  be  secured  to  those  who  have  produced 
them. 

I  am  not  unaware  that  at  present  the  current  of  opinion  on 
this  subject  sets,  or  seems  to  set,  against  me — that  the  dead 
fish  all  float  that  way.  I  realize  that  the  great  majority  of 
Authors  and  Professors  who  treat  of  Political  Economy  are 
Free  Traders — that  their  writings  are  admired  and  com 
mended  as  liberal,  beneficent  and  of  immutable  soundness, 
while  ours  of  the  contrary  part  are  derided  as  narrow,  partial, 
and  impelled  by  a  transient  or  selfish  expediency.  I  perceive 
that  the  paramount  tendency  of  our  time  is  toward  Adven 
ture  and  Speculation  —  that  the  great  mass  of  the  educated 
and  intellectual  are  making  haste  to  be  rich,  and  generally  by 
buying  and  selling  other  men's  labor  or  its  fruits  rather  than 
by  laboring  assiduously  themselves.  Commerce  and  Im 
portation  amass  fortunes,  and  enrich  the  great  journals 
with  lucrative  advertising,  and  found  professorships,  and 
fashion  the  public  sentiment  of  the  comfortable  class  with 
regard  to  Labor,  its  position,  and  requirements.  I  see  that 
the  very  progress  hitherto  made  in  the  Useful  Arts  under  the 
shelter  of  Protective  Duties,  the  progress  still  making  by 
virtue  of  the  impulse  thus  given,  may  render  the  existence 
of  decided  and  stringent  Protection  less  vitally,  obviously 
necessary  than  it  was  in  the  infancy  of  our  Country  and  her 


256  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Industry.  Yet  I  see,  too,  that  we  who  stand  for  Protection 
read,  study,  and  endeavor  to  understand  both  sides  of  the 
question  —  are  familiar  with  our  adversaries'  arguments,  have 
considered  them,  and  think  we  see  why  and  wherein  they 
are  mistaken  and  inconclusive,  while  they  habitually  treat  our 
arguments  with  studied  contempt  or  with  a  radical  miscon 
ception  which  argues  gross  ignorance  or  inattention.  I  can 
not  doubt  that  this  country  is  now  losing  many  millions  per 
annum  for  want  of  a  more  efficient  and  systematic  Pro 
tection  of  its  Industry,  though  some  articles  are  really,  others 
partially  protected  by  it,  and  that  our  Labor  is  receiving  in 
the  average  at  least  one-eighth  less  than  it  would  be  under 
a  thoroughly  Protective  Tariff,  while  hundreds  of  thousands 
stand  idle  and  earn  nothing  whom  that  Tariff  would  amply 
employ  and  adequately  reward.  So  believing,  I  can  not  but 
hope  that  time,  and  discussion,  and  contemplation,  and  the 
cooling  down  of  party  asperities,  and  the  progress  of  events, 
will  work  a  silent  but  thorough  revolution  in  our  National 

O 

Councils  and  that  the  adequate  and  comprehensive  Pro 
tection  of  Industry  will  again  be  regarded  by  legislators  and 
people  as  among  the  most  urgent,  essential,  and  beneficent 
duties  of  the  Federal  Government. 


ALCOHOL  AND  ITS  EFFECTS.  257 


IX. 

ALCOHOLIC  LIQUORS: 

THEIR    ESSENTIAL    NATURE     AND    NECESSARY    EFFECTS    ON 
THE    HUMAN    CONSTITUTION.* 

ALCOHOL  is  a  peculiar  combination  of  Hydrogen,  Oxygen 
and  Carbon.  It  is  a  compound  unknown  to  Nature,  but 
evolved  by  art  from  certain  vegetable  substances  in  a  pecu 
liar  stage  of  dissolution.  The  first  step  toward  producing 
Alcohol  is  the  death  of  the  Grain  or  Fruit  destined  to  yield 
it.  When  the  life  of  any  organic  substance  is  destroyed, 
that  substance  tends  by  a  law  of  the  universe  to  decay  and 
dissolution.  More  accurately,  with  the  cessation  of  organic 
life  the  laws  of  vitality,  by  which  the  peculiar  assimilation 
of  elements  forming  the  Grape,  the  Apple,  the  berry  of 
Wheat  or  Rye,  was  created  and  sustained,  now  lose  their 
power  over  this  matter,  and  the  opposite  laws  of  chemical 
affinity  take  effect  upon  it,  causing  its  several  constituents  to 
enter  into  new  combinations  with  each  other  and  with  other 
substances  wherewith  they  are  brought  in  contact  by  the  ac 
tion  of  air,  water,  and  otherwise.  Thus  the  Sugar,  which, 
in  the  form  of  Starch  or  Gluten,  forms  one  of  the  bases  of 
certain  Grains  and  Fruits,  is  dissolved  in  an  early  stage  of 
the  process  of  decay,  and,  combining  with  other  substances, 
ferments,  or  effervesces,  and  enters  upon  the  stage  known  as 

*  Prepared  by  request  of  the  NATIONAL  DIVISION  OF  THE  SONS  OF  TEMPE 
RANCE,  and  published  under  the  direction  of  a  Committee  appointed  at  the  Session 
of  May,  1849. 

99* 


258  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORM. 

that  of  Vinous  Fermentation.  In  this  stage  Alcohol  is  pro 
duced,  a  fiery,  volatile,  nearly  transparent  liquid,  which, 
imbibed  by  itself,  is  a  most  undoubted  and  deadly  poison  to 
mankind,  as  well  as  to  nearly  or  quite  every  animal  consti 
tution.  Had  Alcohol  been  originally  and  uniformly  pro 
duced  and  imbibed  independently  of  other  fluids,  there  can 
be  no  question  that  it  would  have  been  recognized  and 
shunned  as  a  bane  deadly  as  any  other  vegetable  poison. 

But  Alcohol  does  not  naturally  manifest  itself  indepen 
dently  of  other  substances.  The  water  which  forms  so  large  a 
proportion  of  the  Grape,  the  Apple,  the  Peach,  the  Potato, 
and  which  must  be  commingled  with  the  Grains  in  order  to 
produce  the  Vinous  Fermentation,  remains  combined  with 
the  Alcohol  after  the  fermentation  has  produced  it.  Some 
small  portion  also  of  the  other  constituents  of  the  original 
organic  substance  are  held  in  solution  or  chemical  combina 
tion  by  their  affinities  with  the  Water  or  Alcohol,  or  both  uni 
ted.  Indeed,  it  was  not  till  the  ninth  century  that  Alcohol  was 
separated  and  recognized  as  a  distinct  substance  by  an  Ara 
bian  chemist.  Fermentation  has  been  very  generally  practised, 
more  or  less  rudely,  from  a  very  early  age,  and  Alcoholic 
beverages  of  course  produced  ;  and  Intoxication  just  as  nat 
urally  followed ;  how  or  why  seems  to  have  been  scarcely 
considered.  But  the  Arabian's  discovery  induced  or  blended 
with  the  art  of  Distillation.  Thenceforward,  Alcoholic  Spir 
its,  more  or  less  pure,  began  to  find  a  place  in  the  bottles 
of  the  apothecary,  and,  in  minute  quantities,  among  the 
physician's  prescriptions.  It  was  not  till  the  sixteenth  cen 
tury,  however,  that  Distilled  Liquors  began  to  be  commonly 
used  as  a  beverage  or  stimulant  by  persons  in  health. 

Distillation  is  a  more  potent  process,  superinduced  on 
Fermentation,  rendering  its  liquid  product  more  fiery,  acrid 
and  stimulating.  In  other  words,  it  is  the  art  of  reducing 
the  proportion  of  Water,  &c.  and  increasing  that  of  Alcohol 
in  a  given  quantity  of  the  stimulating  fluid.  Of  the  earlier 


ALCOHOL  AND  ITS  EFFECTS.  259 

stimulants,  Ale  and  Porter  contain  but  one-twenty-fifth  of 
Alcohol,  and  Palm  Wine  one-twentieth ;  Cider,  Perry,  El 
der  and  some  of  the  milder  Grape  Wines  about  one-tenth. 
[It  can  hardly  be  necessary  here  to  remark  that  none  of 
these  contain  Alcohol  nor  any  principle  of  Intoxication  until 
they  have  fermented  or  '  worked,'  as  the  cider-makers  say, 
and  that  many  if  not  most  of  the  ancient  Wines  were  drank 
unfermented.  That  these  were  known  to  the  Hebrews  by  a 
different  word  from  that  used  to  designate  Alcoholic  or  fer 
mented  Wines  has  been  fully  shown  by  recent  critical  inves 
tigations,  and  the  seeming  contradiction  between  those  pas 
sages  of  Scripture  which  mention  approvingly  and  those 
which  severely  condemn  Wine,  is  thus  shown  to  be  no  con 
tradiction  at  all.  In  the  one  case,  a  mild,  harmless,  palatable 
beverage,  '  which  cheereth  god  and  man  ;'  in  the  other  a 
raging  '  mocker,'  a  heating,  corrupting,  infuriating  poison, 
was  indicated.  Those  who  have  any  doubt  on  this  subject 
may  dissipate  it  by  consulting  '  Bacchus,'  '  Anti-Bacchus,' 
E.  C.  Delavan's  essays,  and  other  elaborate  treatises  in  ex 
position  and  defense  of  Total  Abstinence.] 

The  difference  between  Fermented  and  Distilled  Liquors 
is  one  purely  of  degree.  Alcohol,  the  intoxicating  and  poi 
sonous  quality,  is  precisely  the  same  in  the  two,  but  there  is 
more  of  it  in  an  equal  quantity  of  the  Distilled  spirit.  While 
the  different  kinds  of  Beer  contain  from  one-twenty-fifth  up 
to  one-fourteenth  of  Alcohol,  and  the  Fermented  Grape 
Wines  from  one-tenth  to  one-fourth,  the  Distilled  Liquors 
known  as  Brandy,  Rum,  Gin,  &c.  are  generally  a  little  more 
than  half  Alcohol.  Sometimes  they  are  reduced  far  below 
this  standard  by  the  introduction  of  Water  to  increase  the 
seller's  profits  ;  but  this  is  very  unlikely  to  diminish  their 
poisonous  properties,  because  the  diminution  of  '  strength,' 
improperly  so  called,  must  be  disguised  by  the  infusion  of 
drugs,  often  as  poisonous  as  Alcohol  and  sometimes  more 
concentrated.  Whisky,  for  example,  generally  commands 


260  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

from  twenty  to  twenty-five  cents  per  gallon  at  wholesale  in 
this  City,  yet  it  is  known  that  what  passes  for  Whisky  (and 
often  for  Gin,  Brandy  and  Rum  as  well,)  in  the  lowest 
haunts  of  dissipation  among  us,  is  so  concocted  and  '  doc 
tored'  as  to  cost  its  manufacturers  but  fourteen  cents  per 
gallon.  The  vile  and  baleful  ingredients  employed  to  con 
ceal  the  infusion  of  so  much  water  as  will  reduce  the  cost 
per  gallon  to  this  standard  are  such  as,  if  fully  exposed, 
would  utterly  shock  credibility. 

They  greatly  mistake  who  in  this  country  hope  to  live 
longer  by  drinking  Wines  or  Malt  Liquors  than  they  would 
expect  to  if  addicted  instead  to  Distilled  Spirits.  True, 
there  is  less  Alcohol  in  the  same  quantity  of  the  Fermented 
beverages,  but  the  same  quantity  will  not  content  them.  De 
ceive  themselves  as  they  may,  it  is  the  Alcoholic  stimulus 
that  their  depraved  appetites  exact,  aud,  if  indulged  at  all, 
they  will  be  indulged  to  the  constantly  receding  point  of  sat 
isfaction.  The  single  glass  of  Wine  or  Beer  per  day  which 
sufficed  at  the  beginning,  will  soon  be  enlarged  or  repeated. 
It  was  enough  to  start  the  blood  into  a  gallop  yesterday,  but 
falls  short  to-day,  and  will  not  begin  to  do  to-morrow.  And, 
even  were  the  fact  otherwise,  the  Wines  and  Malt  Liquors 
drank  in  this  country  are  nearly  all  so  adulterated  that  drink 
ing  them  would  be  foolhardy  even  if  those  liquids,  when 
pure,  were  naturally  wholesome  instead  of  being  the  poisons 
they  are  known  to  be.  White  Lead,  Red  Lead,  (Litharge,) 
Copperas,  Sugar  of  Lead,  Rhatany,  Logwood,  Alum,  Elder- 
Berries,  Opium,  Henbane,  Quassia,  Aloes,  Tobacco,  Nux 
Vomica,  Oil  of  Vitriol,  Coculus  Indicus,  Grains  of  Paradise, 
and  even  Arsenic,  beside  many  comparatively  harmless  in 
gredients,  are  all  in  current  use  among  the  preparers  of 
Wines,  Malt  and  Distilled  Liquors  for  consumption.  Few 
of  the  Wines  drank  out  of  the  wine-producing  districts  are 
even  comparatively  pure,  while  nine-tenths  of  the  liquids  im 
bibed  by  the  drinkers  of  this  country  never  smelt  of  a  grape. 


ALCOHOL  AND  ITS  EFFECTS.          261 

Even  in  the  Wine-producing  districts  of  France  and  Ger 
many,  there  have  been  formidable  and  fatal  epidemics,  ra 
ging  through  a  lifetime,  caused  solely  by  the  adulteration  of 
wines  with  lead.  So  with  Cider  in  England  and  Rum  in 
Jamaica,  in  the  very  regions  where  these  beverages  were 
respectively  produced.  '  Lead  Colic'  is  a  well  known  dis 
ease,  whereof  drinking  drugged  liquors  is  the  source.  The 
facts  here  stated  do  not  rest  upon  anti-Alcoholic  authority. 
In  the  standard  Vintners'  Guides,  Brewers'  Manuals,  &c. 
you  will  find  directions  for  correcting  acidity,  producing 
paleness,  clearness,  briskness,  body,  color,  bead,  &c.  by 
the  use  of  the  notoriously  poisonous  substances  above 
enumerated.  Sometimes  the  reader  is  warned  against 
liquors  so  drugged,  or  the  practice  of  using  such  deadly 
poisons  is  condemned  and  less  objectionable  substitutes  are 
suggested ;  but  the  manufacturers  take  the  hint.  British 
Custom-house  returns  show  indisputably  that  the  use  of  Nux 
Vomica,  Coculus  Indicus,  &c.  has  rapidly  increased  of  late 
in  England,  as  it  doubtless  has  also  in  this  and  other  civil 
ized  countries.  Nine-tenths  of  these  poisons  are  consumed 
in  the  form  of  drugged  liquors,  and  that  alone.  The  British 
Channel  Islands  are  not  subject  to  the  British  Tariff  of 
Duties,  and  are  consequently  places  of  deposit  for  wines  des 
tined  for  British  consumption,  which  the  dealers  choose  to 
have  within  easy  reach,  while  they  defer  the  payment  of 
duties  as  long  as  practicable.  The  official  returns  show  that 
for  every  pipe  of  wine  imported  into  those  islands  some  ten 
or  twelve  pipes  are  in  due  season  exported  thence  to  London. 
It  is  the  same  the  world  over,  save  that  the  farther  the 
liquors  are  transported  the  greater  is  their  probable  adulter 
ation.  In  Southern  Europe,  half  the  wines  consumed  may 
contain  no  other  poison  than  the  Alcohol  ;  but  in  more 
Northern  countries,  it  is  not  probable  that  one-fourth  are 
thus  uncorrupted  ;  while  in  America  not  one  bottle  in  ten  is 
free  from  gross  adulteration.  Our  home-made  Whisky, 


262  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

New  Rum,  &c.  is  a  little  better ;  our  Porter,  Ale  and  other 
Malt  Liquors  generally  worse.  Adulteration  with  regard  to 
these  is  the  law ;  purity  the  exception.  Of  Liquors  osten 
sibly  imported,  observing,  experienced  drinkers  habitually 
observe  that  they  grow  worse  as  you  recede  from  the  sea 
board,  so  that  the  pretended  French  Brandy,  Holland  Gin  or 
Jamaica  Rum  which  is  a  tolerable  imitation  of  the  genuine  in 
New- York  or  Boston,  becomes  one-fourth  Whisky  and  drug  at 
Albany  to  Syracuse,  half  ditto  thence  to  Buffalo,  three-fourths 
ditto  to  Chicago  and  Milwaukee,  beyond  which  points  it  is 
difficult  to  detect  the  flavor  of  the  genuine  article  at  all.  Now, 
while  this  fact  does  not  necessarily  imply  the  pernicious 
character  of  Alcohol,  it  does  show  that  the  use  of  Alcoholic 
Liquors  is  pernicious  and  perilous.  If  we  waive  altogether 
the  proof  that  Alcohol  is  essentially  a  poison,  the  fact  that  it 
is  habitually  mingled  in  beverages,  with  ingredients  whose 
poisonous  qualities  no  man  ever  disputed,  should  induce  us 
to  let  it  carefully  alone.  Partridges  are  naturally  wholesome 
and  savory  ;  but  they  sometimes  eat  obnoxious  berries  which 
render  their  flesh  a  poison.  When  it  is  known  that  some 
of  them  have  done  so  in  any  locality,  the  eating  of  partridges 
in  that  locality  is  at  once  desisted  from  by  all  but  the  grossly 
ignorant  or  stupid  ;  and  if  it  shall  ever  become  a  habit  with 
these  birds  to  eat  the  poisonous  berries  freely  and  generally, 
so  that  their  bodies  shall  be  usually  poisonous,  who  can 
doubt  that  their  flesh  will  be  generally  rejected  and  uneaten? 
In  nothing  else  do  sensible,  moral,  intelligent  men  act  so 
irrationally  as  when  they  persist  in  the  habitual  use  of  Alco 
holic  Liquors. 

The  first  production  of  Alcoholic  Liquids  was  doubtless 
accidental — caused  by  the  spontaneous  fermentation  of 
Grape-juice,  Milk,  or  Grain,  under  peculiar  circumstances, 
finally  evolving  a  fiery,  transparent  fluid.  (When  we  term 
Alcohol  an  unnatural  product,  we  simply  place  it  in  the  same 
category  with  carrion,  malformations,  idiots,  &c.  which  are 


ALCOHOL  AND  ITS  EFFECTS.  263 

not  produced  in  the  regular  and  healthy  course  of  Nature, 
but  evidence  her  defeat  and  disappointment.)  Ten  thousand 
times  this  phenomenon  may  have  occurred  unnoted,  before 
some  stern  necessity  of  thirst,  faintness,  and  destitution  in 
duced  some  one  to  imbibe  cautiously  of  the  product,  in  spite 
of  the  reluctance  aod  revolt  of  the  senses.  The  effect  was 
immediate  and  palpable  —  elasticity,  energy,  courage,  in- 
vigoration,  —  the  first  pair  and  the  apple  over  again.  The 
depression,  prostration,  and  pain  came  afterward,  and  could 
be  forgotten  or  referred  to  some  other  cause.  If  the  first  bold 
experimenter  in  Alcohol  did  not  choose  to  repeat  the  dose, 
the  second,  the  fifth,  or  the  tenth  was  doubtless  less  wise. 
It  crept  gradually  into  use  —  first,  as  a  medicine  or  wonder 
ful  elixir,  capable  of  curing  almost  any  disease  ;  and  very 
soon  repaid  the  confidence  reposed  in  it  by  creating  many 
new  disorders  and  aggravating  those  previously  known. 
While  it  may  have  been  medically  employed  in  some  cases 
with  effect,  it  has  unquestionably  created  a  thousand  pains 
where  it  ever  removed  one,  and  caused  more  deaths  than  all 
the  medicines  on  earth  have  postponed  or  prevented. 

Throw  a  fierce  bloodhound  into  the  cage  of  a  young 
leopard  or  tiger,  and,  although  neither  ever  before  saw  an 
animal  of  the  other's  species,  each  instantly,  instinctively 
recognizes  the  presence  of  a  deadly  foe.  Each  summons 
every  energy  for  the  imminent  and  deadly  encounter,  places 
himself  in  his  best  attitude,  rallies  all  his  strength,  quickens 
his  circulation  —  'bristles  up,'  as  we  say.  He  is  more 
strongly  nerved,  resolute,  formidable  now  than  he  was  a 
minute  since,  precisely  because  he  feels  himself  confronted 
by  an  implacable  enemy,  before  whom  to  quail  is  immediate 
death. 

So  with  the  use  of  Alcohol.  A  man  swallows  a  glass  of 
Alcoholic  Spirits  —  his  first.  At  once  his  whole  vital  economy 
recognizes  the  presence  of  an  unnatural  intruder  —  a  deadly 
enemy.  The  stomach,  disturbed  in  all  its  functions,  savs, 


264  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

'You  must  not  stop  here  —  I  can  not  digest  you'  —  and 
throws  it  off  upon  the  liver,  which  repels  it  as  peremptorily, 
and  thrusts  it  toward  the  heart,  which  with  like  emphasis 
repels  it.  It  is  thus  hurried  from  one  to  another  of  the  vital 
organs,  and  repulsed  by  them  all ;  but  the  necessity  for 
disposing  of  it  is  pressingly  imperative,  a,nd  it  is  expelled  in 
one  way  or  another — partly  through  the  kidneys,  partly 
through  the  lungs,  and  partly  through  the  pores  of  the  skin. 
Unless  the  outrage  be  repeated,  a  short  time  sees  the  enemy 
banished,  but  only  through  an  extraordinary  exertion,  an  un 
natural  activity  of  all  the  vital  forces.  The  pulse  bounds, 
the  blood  gallops,  the  heart  quickens  its  movements,  and 
even  the  endangered  brain  is  goaded  to  unwonted  exertion. 
Of  all  these  exhausting  efforts,  the  mind  perceives  only  the 
impulse,  the  exhilaration.  The  happy  neophyte  almost  walks 
on  air — he  feels  richer,  more  generous,  and  of  more  conse 
quence  than  hitherto — he  has  a  great  mind  to  give  somebody 
a  fortune.  (The  illusive  exhalation  produced  by  opium  and 
some  other  poisons  is  known  to  be  even  more  intellectual 
and  ethereal  than  that  produced  by  Alcoholic  Liquors.)  But 
all  this  elevation  of  spirits  is  not  really  created  by  the  stim 
ulus —  it  is  simply  so  much  vivacity  and  elation  of  spirits 
borrowed  at  ruinous  usury,  and  of  which  payment  is  sure  to 
be  demanded  to-morrow.  To-morrow  comes,  and  the 
demand  with  it ;  but  the  debauched  consciousness  fails  to 
attribute  the  intolerable  exhaustion  and  depression  to  its  real 
cause.  '  When  the  liquor  was  present,  and  potent,'  it  per 
versely  reasons,  '  all  was  better  than  usual ;  but,  now  that  it 
is  gone,  I  feel  horribly.'  '  Take  more,'  chimes  in  the  de 
praved  appetite,  and  the  counsel  is  deferred  to.  More  is 
taken,  and  momentary  relief  thereby  secured,  by  means 
which  shall  necessitate  a  still  more  abject  prostration  on  the 
morrow,  which  will  require  a  still  stronger  potion  to  over 
come  it.  And  thus  the  blind  victim  goes  on,  cherishing  the 
adder  which  daily  stings  him,  and  fancying  he  is  revived  and 


ALCOHOL  AND  ITS  EFFECTS.  265 

upheld  by  that  which  is  constantly  depressing  and  destroy 
ing  him. 

But  it  is  said  that  very  many  drink  moderately  and 
guardedly  through  a  long  course  of  years,  preserving  to  old 
age  a  sound  constitution  and  vigorous  intellect,  which  could 
not  be  the  case  if  the  natural  effects  of  Alcoholic  Drinks 
were  such  as  has  been  depicted. 

Now  that  some  men  live  long  in  spite  of  moderate  drinking 
no  more  proves  that  practice  safe  and  healthful  than  the  fact 
that  some  soldiers  who  fought  through  all  Napoleon's  wars 
are  still  alive  proves  fighting  a  vocation  conducive  to 
longevity.  That  some  persist  in  drinking  without  drinking 
immoderately  is  true  ;  but  the  natural  tendency  of  drinking 
at  all  is  nevertheless  from  less  to  more,  and  from  more  to  in 
disputable  excess.  There  are  many  vices  of  which  the 
natural,  obvious  penalty  is  not  inflicted  on  every  one  who 
commits  them,  yet  no  man  doubts  the  connection  between  the 
sin  and  the  punishment.  Some  men  steal  so  moderately 
and  slily  that  they  are  never  detected  by  man  ;  yet  no  one 
doubts  that  stealing  is  a  crime,  and  that  every  crime  meets 
its  proper  punishment.  That  some  men  drink  liquors  yet  do 
not  die  drunkards  is  true,  as  it  also  is  that  some  habitual 
drunkards  live  to  old  age  ;  and  yet  it  is  none  the  less  true 
that  drinking  leads  to  drunkenness,  and  drunkenness  shortens 
life.  The  laws  of  the  universe  are  vindicated  alike  by  their 
usual  consequences  and  the  apparent  exceptions.  There 
may  be  men  who  began  to  drink  one  glass  of  liquor  per  day 
forty  years  ago,  and  whom  one  glass  per  day  still  suffices  ; 
but  if  so  they  are  exceptions  to  a  law  almost  universally 
vindicated ;  and  it  is  safe  to  assume  of  them  that  a  less 
amount  of  self-denial  than  was  requisite  to  keep  their  allow 
ance  down  to  one  glass  per  day  would  have  preserved  them 
from  drinking  at  all.  And  if  any  moderate  drinker  of  forty 
years'  standing  will  recall  to  mind  the  subsequent  career  of 
the  fifteen  or  twenty  associates  in  whose  company  he  began 
23 


266  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

to  drink,  he  will,  if  well  informed  and  candid,  admit  that 
seven-eighths  of  them  are  now  dead,  and  that  full  three- 
fourths,  whether  now  living  or  dead,  have  been  seriously 
injured  by  drinking. 

If  what  has  been  said  of  the  nature  and  essential  properties 
of  Alcoholic  Liquors  be  correct,  there  can  be  no  such  thing 
as  a  temperate  or  moderate  use  of  them  as  beverages.  No 
man  in  the  enjoyment  of  health  and  vigor  can  need  such 
beverages  nor  innocently  imbibe  them,  whether  in  large  or 
small  quantities.  The  whole  controversy  properly  hinges 
on  this  question  — <  Is  Alcohol  naturally  a  poison  to  the 
human  constitution  ?'  If  the  proper  answer  be  Yes,  then  it 
can  never  be  innocently  and  safely  imbibed,  except  where  it 
is  medically  prescribed  as  an  antidote  to  some  still  more 
dangerous  and  deadly  evil  which  it  is  calculated  to  dislodge. 
If  Alcohol  be  naturally  a  poison  to  man,  then  there  can  be  no 
more  temperate  and  innocent  use  of  it  as  a  beverage  than 
temperate  forgery,  adultery,  or  murder.  Is  Alcohol,  then, 
essentially  a  poison  ?  I  have  already  expressed  my  own 
conviction,  which  is  that  of  the  advocates  of  Total  Absti 
nence  generally.  I  will  proceed  to  quote  a  very  few  Medi 
cal  authorities  in  support  of  that  conviction.  I  can  not  quote 
one  in  a  hundred,  but  I  affirm  that  no  candid,  intelligent 
adversary  will  deny  that  the  great  mass  of  the  scientific  and 
able  writers  who  have  investigated  and  treated  of  the  subject 
concur  substantially  in  the  views  here  presented. 

Sir  Astley  Cooper  who  has  no  superior  as  a  British 
Medical  authority,  observes : 

"  I  never  suffer  Ardent  Spirits  in  my  house,  thinking  them  evil  spir 
its  ;  and  if  the  poor  could  witness  the  white  livers,  the  dropsies,  the 
shattered  nervous  systems  which  I  have  seen,  as  the  consequences  of 
drinking,  they  would  be  aware  that  spirits  and  poisons  are  synonymous 
terms." 

Dr.  Wm.  Beaumont,  Surgeon  in  the  U.  S.  Army,  was 
stationed  at  Mackinac,  Lake  Huron,  in  1822,  when  Alexis 


ALCOHOL  AND  ITS  EFFECTS.  057 

St.  Martin,  a  robust  French  Canadian  eighteen  years  of  age, 
was  severely  wounded  in  his  side  by  the  accidental  discharge 
of  a  musket  within  a  yard  of  him,  whereby  part  of  a  rib  and 
a  large  portion  of  his  side  were  blown  off,  lacerating  one  of 
his  lungs  and  perforating  his  stomach.  His  life  was  never 
theless  saved,  and  the  wound  was  healed  but  not  closed  ;  the 
stomach  finally  forming  a  sort  of  fold  or  overlap,  which  pre 
vented  any  exudation  of  its  contents  through  that  orifice,  but 
did  not,  forbid  the  introduction  nor  withdrawal  of  nutritive 
substances  by  way  of  it ;  nor  did  such  operation  occasion 
any  pain.  The  whole  process  of  digestion  was  thence  ob 
served  and  experimented  upon  by  Dr.  Beaumont,  just  as 
plainly  as  you  may  observe  the  working  of  bees  in  a  glass 
hive.  The  time  required  for  the  digestion  of  any  substance 
eaten  by  St.  Martin  ;  the  effects  of  various  combinations  of 
food  or  of  different  liquids  with  any  one  or  more  of  them  ;  the 
diseases  of  the  stomach  and  their  causes  —  all  were  watched 
and  the  results  noted  through  a  series  of  years.  Dr.  Beau 
mont's  book  is  purely  scientific  ;  it  has  no  theory  to  estab 
lish,  no  party  nor  school  to  subserve  ;  it  simply  details  his 
experiments  and  observations  and  draws  the  obvious  de 
ductions  therefrom.  St.  Martin  frequently  drank  Alcoholic 
Liquors,  though  not  what  is  called  intemperately,  and  this  is 
Dr.  Beaumont's  statement  of  the  consequences  of  such  drink 
ing  observed  by  him  : 

"  The  mucous  membrane  of  the  stomach  was  covered  with  inflam 
matory  and  ulcerous  patches ;  the  secretions  were  vitiated,  and  the 
gastric  juice  diminished  in  quantity,  and  of  an  unnatural  viscidity  ;  yet 
he  described  himself  as  perfectly  well  and  complained  of  nothing.  Two 
days  subsequent  to  this,  the  inner  membrane  of  the  stomach  was 
unusually  morbid,  the  inflammatory  appearance  more  extensive,  the 
spots  more  livid  than  usual ;  from  the  surface  some  of  them  exuded 
small  drops  of  grumous  blood ;  the  ulcerous  patches  were  larger  and 
more  numerous ;  the  mucous  covering  thicker  than  usual,  and  the 
gastric  secretions  much  more  vitiated.  The  gastric  fluids  extracted 
were  mixed  with  a  large  proportion  of  thick,  ropy  mucus,  and  a  con- 


268  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

siderable  rauco-purulent  discharge,  slightly  tinged  with  blood,  resem 
bling  discharges  from  the  bowels  in  some  cases  of  dysentery.  Yet, 
notwithstanding  this  diseased  appearance  of  the  stomach,  no  very  essen 
tial  aberration  of  its  functions  was  manifested.  St.  Martin  complained 
of  no  symptoms  indicating  any  general  derangement  of  the  system, 
except  an  uneasy  sensation  and  tenderness  at  the  pit  of  the  stomach, 
and  some  vertigo,  with  dimness  and  yellowness  of  vision,  on  stooping 
down  and  rising  up  again." 

Dr.  Beaumont  farther  remarks  that 

"  The  free  use  of  Ardent  Spirits,  Wine,  Beer,  or  any  other  in 
toxicating  liquor,  when  continued  for  some  days,  has  invariably  pro 
duced  these  changes The  use  of  Ardent  Spirits  always  produces 

disease  of  the  stomach  if  persevered  in,"  &c.  &c. 

Is  there  on  the  face  of  the  earth  any  tangible  evidence  in 
conflict  with  this  testimony  ?  I  know  of  none. 

Dr.  Muzzy,  an  eminent  American  physiologist,  says : 

"  That  Alcohol  is  a  poison   to  our  organization   is   evident  from 

observation "What  is  poison?     It  is  that  substance,  in  whatever 

form  it  may  be,  which,  when  applied  to  a  living  surface,  disconcerts 
life's  healthy  movements.  *  *  *  *  Such  a  poison  is  Alcohol ;  such  in 
all  its  forms,  mix  it  as  you  may.  It  is  never  digested  and  converted 
into  nourishment. 

Dr.  Dods,  an  eminent  English  physician,  being  called 
before  a  Committee  of  the  House  of  Commons,  testified 
as  follows : 

*'  Writers  on  Medical  Jurisprudence  rank  Alcohol  among  narcotic- 
acrid  poisons,"  of  which  "  small  quantities,  if  repeated,  always  prove 
more  or  less  injurious,"  and  that  "  the  morbid  appearances  seen  after 
death  occasioned  by  Ardent  Spirits  exactly  agree  with  those  which  re 
sult  from  poisoning  caused  by  any  other  substance  of  the  same  class." 

Dr.  Dods,  in  the  course  of  his  testimony,  farther  says  : 

"  The  effects  of  Alcohol  on  the  blood-vessels  seems  to  be  two-fold 
— increased  excitement  and  contraction  in  the  diameter  of  the  vessels  ; 
this  tends  to  produce  enlargement  in  some  parts  of  the  blood-vessels, 
or  effusion,  should  their  coats  give  way  at  any  part  of  their  course 


ALCOHOL  AND  ITS  EFFECTS.          269 

Diseased  deposits  are  frequently  formed  where  a  branch  is  given  off, 
or  in  some  wider  portion  of  the  blood-vessels,  which  give  rise  to  the 
most  painful  symptoms,  such  as  are  common  in  gout  or  rheumatism." 

It  would  be  as  easy  to  multiply  quotations  of  similar  pur 
port —  far  easier  than  to  refrain.  —  But  to  keep  within  the 
necessary  limit  of  a  tract  I  am  compelled  to  stop  here.  Let 
the  candid  and  reasonable  drinker  say  whether  he  can  safely 
and  innocently  imbibe  Alcholic  beverages  in  any  quantity. 

'  How  is  it,'  asks  a  doubter,  *  if  Alcohol  be  so  poisonous, 
that  the  best  doctors  often  use  it  in  their  medical  pre 
scriptions  ?' —  The  question  implies  ignorance  in  the  querist 
that  other  poisons,  and  indeed  most  poisons,  are  likewise 
used  as  medicines,  including  the  most  deadly.  Mercury, 
Opium,  Nightshade,  Hemlock,  Arsenic,  and  even  Prussic 
Acid,  are  in  daily  use  by  the  ablest  physicians  for  the  cure 
of  human  maladies,  and,  though  often  abused  and  misapplied, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  each  and  all  of  them  may  be  and 
are  prescribed  by  the  experienced  and  skillful  to  remove 
pain  and  preserve  life.  But  who  thence  argues  that  these 
articles  may  be  harmlessly  and  beneficially  swallowed  by 
men  in  health  as  their  own  fancy  or  depraved  appetite  may 
prompt  ?  The  laws  of  Health  and  those  of  Disease  are  so 
different  that  the  fact  of  a  particular  substance  being  useful 
in  certain  stages  or  forms  of  disease,  would  rather  argue  its 
unfitness  to  be  profusely  swallowed  in  health  merely  for  the 
sake  of  a  sensual  gratification.  But  I  do  not  press  that 
argument.  Suffice  it  that  the  fact  of  Alcohol's  being  some 
times  useful  as  a  medicine  does  not  and  can  not  prove  that 
it,  is  innocent  as  a  beverage. 

I  have  aimed  to  demonstrate  the  physical  evils  of  Tempe 
rate  Drinking  (as  it  is  improperly  called,  since  no  drinking 
of  liquids  essentially  poisonous  for  the  sake  of  a  sensual 
/gratification  can  be  truly  Temperate)  by  other  considerations 
than  those  connected  with  Drunkenness.  It  is  very  true 
that  he  who  drinks,  however  moderately,  is  in  danger  of 
13* 


270  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

dying  a  drunkard  ;  but  if  there  were  no  such  thing  as  drunk 
enness  it  would  still  be  most  unwise  and  culpable  to  drink. 
Indeed,  it  has  been  forcibly  argued  that  the  physical  evils  of 
drinking  would  be  greater  if  Drunkenness  were  unknown. 
Inebriety  dethrones  the  reason,  often  making  of  a  naturally 
inoffensive,  good-natured  man,  a  furious,  raging  fiend ;  but 
it  does  not  originate  the  mischief — it  rather  serves  to  expel 
and  finish  it.  It  is  the  demoniac  spirit  tearing  his  victim 
because  commanded  to  come  out  of  him.  Thousands  die 
prematurely  every  year  in  consequence  of  drinking  who  never 
were  thoroughly  drunk  in  their  lives.  One  man  drinks  three 
glasses  and  loses  his  reason  ;  another  drinks  six,  or  even  ten, 
and  seems  wholly  unaffected.  Men  say  of  the  latter,  '  He 
has  a  strong  head  ;'  and  cigar-puffing,  wine-bibbing  young 
sters  are  apt  to  envy  him  ;  yet  he  is  far  more  likely  to  die  in 
consequence  of  drinking  than  his  neighbor  whom  three 
glasses  knock  over.  The  former  retains  the  poison  in  his 
system,  and  it  silently  preys  upon  him  :  in  the  latter,  Nature, 
revolting  at  the  deadly  potion,  makes  a  convulsive  effort  and 
throws  it  off.  He  is  damaged  by  the  liquor,  but  not  by  its 
ejectment,  whatever  he  may  fancy.  Intoxication  is  a  kindly 
though  ungentle  ministration  whose  object  is  relief  and  re 
covery.  Drinking  is  not  evil  because  it  produces  Intoxica 
tion,  but  Intoxication  is  ordained  to  limit  the  physical  evils 
of  Drinking.  Let  no  free  drinker,  therefore,  glory  in  his 
ability  to  drink  much  without  Intoxication  ;  for,  in  the  natu 
ral  course  of  events,  he  will  need  his  coffin  much  sooner 
than  if  liquor  easily  overcame  him. 

If  the  propositions  affirmed  in  this  essay  be  true,  how  can 
any  youth  read  them  and  yet  become  or  continue  a  drinker 
of  Alcoholic  Liquors  ?  Banish,  if  you  can,  all  thought  of 
God  and  His  judgments  —  forget  or  deny  your  immortality 
—  deride  the  idea  of  restricting  or  qualifying  your  own  grati 
fication  for  the  sake  of  kindred,  friends,  country  or  race  — 
regard  yourself  merely  as  an  animal  that  has  happened  here 


ALCOHOL  AND  ITS  EFFECTS.  271 

io  sport  a  brief  summer,  then  utterly  perish  —  and  still  is  it 
not  a  palpable  mistake  to  drink  anything  that  intoxicates  ? 
Why  should  it  intoxicate  if  it  be  not  essentially  a  poison  ? 
Is  there  any  other  substance  claimed  to  be  innocent  and 
wholesome  in  moderate  quantities  which  drowns  the  reason 
if  the  amount  taken  be  increased  ?  Why  seek  enjoyment 
in  such  a  perilous  and  dubious  way  —  a  path  paved  with  the 
bones  of  millions  after  millions  who  have  fallen  in  pursuing 
it  —  when  innocent  and  healthful  pleasures  everywhere  sur 
round  and  invite  you  ?  Lived  there  ever  a  human  being 
who  regretted  at  death  that  he  had  through  life  refrained  from 
the  use  of  stimulating  drinks  '?  and  how  countless  the  mil 
lions  who  have  with  reason  deplored  such  use  as  the  primary, 
fatal  mistake  of  their  lives  ?  Surely,  from  the  radiant  heavens 
above  us,  the  dust  once  quickened  beneath  us,  conies  to  the 
attentive  ear  a  voice  which  impressively  admonishes,  BE 

WISE  WHILE  IT  IS  CALLED  To-DAY. 

[NOTE — The  writer  does  not  pretend  to  know  anything  on  the  subject  of  Tem 
perance  which  others  have  not  known  and  well  said  before  him.  He  acknowledges 
his  obligations  for  ideas  herein  presented  to  Sylvester  Graham,  Rev.  B.  Parsons, 
and  several  others,  beside  those  he  has  expressly  quoted  in  the  foregoing  pages.] 


272  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS, 


X. 
THE  SOCIAL  ARCHITECTS— FOURIER. 

A      LECTURE. 

BY  the  term  Society  I  indicate  that  indefinite  circle  of 
relations,  usages,  unwritten  laws,  duties,  obligations,  whereby 
every  human  being  is  surrounded  from  birth  to  burial,  the 
hermit  who  flees  from  the  face  of  his  fellows  and  dwells  be 
yond  the  reach  of  human  control  or  influence  alone  excepted. 
Wherever  two  or  more  human  beings  exist,  recognizing 
some  relations  or  duties  to  each  other,  there  is  Society. 

Yet  the  Social  Structure  has  varied  from  age  to  age  and 
from  country  to  country.  Its  lowest  form  is  probably  that 
exhibited  in  our  own  day  by  the  savages  of  Australia  and 
some  other  isles  of  the  Southern  Ocean.  Looking  upon 
this  from  our  point  of  view,  we  can  readily  see  that  it  is  ex 
ceedingly  imperfect,  and  ill  suited  to  promote  the  happiness 
of  the  People  living  under  it.  The  wandering,  foraging, 
hunting,  fighting  tribe  which  abandons  its  aged  and  decrepit 
members  to  perish  by  famine,  frost  or  the  wolf,  doubtless 
conforms  reluctantly  to  the  dictates  of  a  hard  necessity.  It 
commits  its  burdensome  members  to  such  Aims-Houses  as 
it  has.  Our  criticisms  upon  its  conduct,  which  at  first  blush 
appeared  so  unfeeling,  must,  if  just,  go  behind  the  simple  act 
at  which  our  humane  feelings  revolt.  That  was  unavoid 
able,  except  by  preceding  arrangements  and  provisions — in 
other  words,  by  a  better  Social  structure.  To  secure  this 


THE  SOCIAL  ARCHITECTS.  273 

must  all  wise  efforts  for  the  prevention  of  such  tragedies  be 
directed. 

Four  distinct  orders  of  Society,  variously  modified  as  they 
are  unfolded,  one  from  another,  have  existed  and  now  exist 
on  the  earth — the  Patriarchal,  the  Savage,  the  Barbarian, 
and  the  Civilized.  Sacred  History  assures  us  that  the  Patri 
archal  is  the  oldest,  and  that  while  population  was  sparse 
and  Man's  desires  few  and  simple,  it  assured  a  moderate 
degree  of  happiness  to  those  who  reposed  in  its  shade.  But 
a  Patriarchal  Society  is  not  formed  to  resist  the  rude  shocks 
of  War  nor  to  repress  the  effervescence  of  vehement  passions. 
The  few  possess  and  rule ;  the  many  labor  and  obey. 
Soon,  laborers  are  more  abundant  than  employment ;  the 
patriarch's  people  are  "  servants  born  in  his  household"  — 
in  other  words,  Slaves  ;  his  sway  is  vigorous,  his  dispensa 
tions  of  food  and  raiment  scanty  ;  the  aspiring,  the  turbu 
lent,  the  criminal  become  fugitives  or  outcasts  in  large  num 
bers  ;  he  is  attacked  and  plundered  by  these  or  by  the  troops 
of  some  marauding  conqueror,  and  the  Patriarchal  System 
is  no  more.  The  world  outgrows  it,  as  the  son  his  father's 
rule  —  not  always,  it  must  be  conceded,  to  his  own  advan 
tage.  But  of  the  various  orders  of  Society  wrhich  the  world 
has  yet  known,  I  need  not  farther  speak.  War,  Conquest, 
the  subjection  of  Race  to  Race,  and  a  general  aversion  to 
Industry,  are  the  proper  characteristics  of  the  Savage  and 
Barbarian  eras,  but  Civilization  has  never  yet  been  able  to 
rise  above  them.  The  fear  of  starvation  is  an  inducement  to 
labor  only  less  degrading  than  the  dread  of  the  lash. 

Civilization,  as  manifested  in  the  most  favored  Christian 
countries,  is  unquestionably  a  great  advance  upon,  as  it  is  a 
wide  departure  from,  any  Social  order  which  had  preceded 
it.  The  brilliant  sophisms  of  Rousseau  and  his  school  have 
never  really  convinced  any  considerable  number  that  the 
well-being  of  mankind  is  to  be  sought  in  a  return  to  the  wig 
wam  and  bark  canoe  of  the  Indian.  Doubtless,  the  city  has 


274  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

many  vices,  many  diseases,  many  forms  and  occasions  of 
suffering,  unknown  to  the  simpler,  hardier  life  of  the  savage. 
But  it  has  its  enjoyments  also  —  pleasures  of  the  Intellect  and 
the  Soul  —  which  those  who  have  once  tasted  them  can  never 
willingly  relinquish.  We  may  look  back  with  a  sigh  to  the 
simple  joys  of  Childhood,  yet  we  are  rarely  in  earnest  when 
we  wish  we  were  children  again.  If  to  the  feeble  glimmer 
ing  of  the  stars  has  succeeded  the  indistinctness  of  the  morn 
ing  twilight,  we  must  not  waste  time  in  idle  lamentations, 
but  look  steadfastly  upward  and  onward  to  the  day. 

The  idea  of  a  direct  and  systematic  effort  for  the  better 
ordering  of  the  Social  relations  of  Men,  is  almost  as  old  as 
History.  The  '  Republic'  of  Plato  is  its  most  ancient  expres 
sion  now  extant.  In  that  remarkable  essay  of  one  of  the 
profoundest  minds  of  antiquity,  the  critic  detects  the  most 
glaring  incongruities.  A  vigorous  maintenance  of  rank  and 
caste  on  the  one  hand,  \vith  an  abolition  of  all  individual 
property  and  even  of  the  ties  of  family  on  the  other — here 
are  conditions  which  could  not  possibly  coexist  for  any  con 
siderable  time.  But  the  '  Republic,'  regarded  in  its  proper 
light  as  a  protest  against  existing  evils  and  the  suggestion  of 
a  comprehensive  plan  for  Political  and  Social  improvement, 
has  great  worth.  It  was  the  remonstrance  of  a  great  and 
pure  soul  against  the  usages  founded  in  selfishness,  injustice 
and  perverseness,  by  which  the  lives  of  a  great  majority  of 
the  human  family  were  made  bitter.  That  it  was  not  in  all 
respects  worthy  of  acceptance  is  the  fault  not  of  the  author 
but  of  the  age  —  an  additional  evidence  of  the  existence  and 
universality  of  the  evils  it  exposes  and  combats.  If  each 
succeeding  philosopher  whom  the  world  has  reverenced  as  a 
teacher  and  a  guide,  had  done  but  half  so  much  as  Plato  to 
promote  it,  a  great  Social  revolution  would  ere  this  have 
been  accomplished. 

But  the  world  has   been    rarely  blessed  with    a   Plato. 
Inquirers  have  found  suggestions  of  a  Social  reconstruction, 


THE  SOCIAL  ARCHITECTS.  275 

more  or  less  earnest  and  thorough,  in  the  writings  of  St. 
Pierre,  of  Campanella,  of  Morelly,  ofFenelon,  of  Rabelais, 
of  De  Foe ;  and  manyothers  might  doubtless  be  added  to 
the  list. 

The  '  Utopia1  of  Sir  Thomas  More  deserves  a  separate 
notice.  As  the  production  of  an  eminent  as  well  as  wise 
and  good  man,  a  Lord  Chancellor  of  England  two  centuries, 
ago,  and  one  who  has  made  his  mark  legibly  and  brightly 
on  the  Jurisprudence,  as  well  as  the  literature  of  his  eventful 
age,  *  Utopia'  demands  our  earnest  regard.  Its  simplicity 
and  beauty  of  style,  its  manliness  of  thought  and  benevolence 
of  spirit,  have  won  it  many  admirers  among  those  who 
would  have  been  most  shocked  at  the  idea  of  any  practical 
realization  of  its  pictures  of  a  better  social  system. 

Utopia  is  depicted  as  a  Republic,  in  which  every  exertion, 
every  impulse  tends  to  and  promotes  the  public  good.  All 
Property  is  common,  but  every  one  labors  a  certain  portion 
of  each  day  for  the  general  weal,  the  hours  of  toil  being 
agreeably  relieved  by  music  and  recreations.  Innocent 
pleasure  is  the  general  aspiration,  and  to  secure  the  widest 
possible  enjoyment  the  object  of  the  Political  and  Social 
Institutions.  The  laws  are  few  and  simple,  and  the  penal 
ties  of  offences  are  mild,  that  of  death  being  never  inflicted. 
The  author  says,  what  would  hardly  be  expected  from  a 
judge,  save  one  in  whom  manhood  was  too  strong  to  be 
overpowered  by  any  circumstance  of  position  or  official  duty, 
'  that  as  crimes  spring  oftener  from  the  injustice  and  wrong 
'  of  Society  than  from  the  inherent  depravity  of  the  indi- 
'vidual,  it  is  clearly  our  duty  and  our  true  policy  to  prevent 
'  offences  and  reform  offenders  rather  than  hope  to  deter  by 
'  the  severity  of  punishments.'  It  is  remarkable  and  would 
seem  not  a  little  inconsistent  that  the  author,  while  he 
eschews  individual  property,  yet  tolerates  Personal  Slavery. 

The  last  writer  who  need  be  noticed^in  this  class  of 
theoretical  reconstructors  of  Society  is  Harrington,  author 


276  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

of  'Oceana,'  who  lived  in  the  time  of  Cromwell.  He,  too, 
depicts  to  us  an  imaginary  Commonwealth,  in  which  he 
recasts  Society  for  the  sake  of  constituting  a  perfect  Govern 
ment.  Power,  he  assumes,  always  follows  the  Land,  and 
so,  in  order  to  a  proper  distribution  of  power  he  ordains 
an  equal  distribution  of  Property,  though  recognizing  the 
distinction  of  castes  or  orders  in  Society. 

I  may  not  linger  over  details.  Let  me  remark,  however, 
that  these  speculators  on  the  reconstruction  of  Society,  from 
Plato  to  Harrington,  were  not  weak  men ;  they  were  not 
fanatics  ;  they  were  not  outlaws.  They  were  among  the 
wisest  and  best  men  whose  names  have  come  down  to  us. 
They  were  generally  men  held  in  high  honor  and  entrusted 
with  power ;  who,  according  to  the  vulgar  estimate,  had 
everything  to  lose  and  nothing  to  gain  by  such  changes  as 
they  proposed.  No  conceivable  motive  for  their  inculcations 
can  be  adduced,  if  we  reject  the  hypothesis  of  a  profound 
conviction  that  the  welfare  of  mankind  imperatively  demanded 
some  radical  change. 

I  can  not  at  all  concur  with  those  who  in  our  day  have 
professed  to  find  in  these  productions  of  lofty  and  generous 
minds  only  the  sportive  sallies  of  lively  and  ardent  imagin 
ations —  mere  castles  in  the  air,  intended  but  to  amuse  a 
passing  hour.  Their  authors  —  I  speak  of  those  upon 
whose  works  I  have  mainly  dwelt — were  not  novelists. 
They  were  not  writers  for  bread  nor  for  popular  applause. 
They  were  grave  statesmen,  eminent  sages,  profound  philos 
ophers.  Silence  would  to  any  one  of  them  have  been  more 
grateful,  more  joyous,  more  fruitful,  than  inditing  romances 
to  dazzle  coteries  and  win  admiration  from  the  empty  and  the 
idle.  I  conclude,  therefore,  that  each  of  them  had  a  meaning 
and  a  purpose,  and  that  this  purpose  is  clearly  indicated 
by  the  works  themselves.  Doubtless,  the  exposure  and 
demolition  of  some  immediate  practical  errors  of  policy  or 
of  habit  —  some  deforming  accretion  which  long  years  of 


THE  SOCIAL  ARCHITECTS.  277 

ignorance  or  vicious  passion,  of  state-craft  or  priestcraft,  had 
built  up,  drop  by  drop,  on  the  face  of  Society  —  was  aimed  at, 
as  in  the  wilder  fancies  of  the  satirists  and  fabulists  of  their 
times.  Doubtless,  if  any  one  of  them  had  been  called  upon 
to  establish  at  once,  with  such  men  and  means  as  he  saw 
around  him,  such  a  Social  condition  as  he  had  portrayed,  he 
would  have  wisely  shrunk  from  the  task.  But  I  can  not 
doubt  that  each  of  these  radiant  minds  was  penetrated  by  the 
conviction  that  the  Social  structure  wherein  they  and  all  men 
lived  and  struggled,  and  sinned  and  suffered,  was  in  itself 
radically  vicious  and  wrong  —  that  it  inevitably  tended  to 
create  the  evils  which  all  good  men  deplored  and  resisted, 
and  that  a  Social  Order  was  possible  in  which  these  evils,  if 
not  utterly  abolished,  should  be  greatly  modified  and 
restrained,  while  happiness  and  purity  should  be  immensely 
increased  and  far  more  impartially  distributed.  To  incite 
men  to  seek  for  and  obtain  that  better  condition  was  the 
motive  by  which  they  were  impelled  and  directed. 

The  practical  attempts  to  realize  a  better  Social  structure 
are  almost  as  old  as  the  theoretical  inculcations  of  its  possibil 
ity —  perhaps  older.  To  speak  of  no  other  —  the  Essenes  of 
the  time  of  our  Savior  afford  a  well-known  example.  They 
were  a  community  of  mild  and  simple  ascetics,  holding  all 
properly  in  common,  discarding  Marriage  and  living  in  pure 
celibacy,  refraining  from  War,  and  Oaths,  and  Slavery,  and 
bloodshedding  on  whatever  pretense.  They  were  in  short 
very  much  like  the  Shakers,  so  called,  of  our  day,  with 
fewer  prejudices  and  a  deeper  intellectual  life.  Their  exist 
ence  was  terminated  by  the  stupendous  calamities  which 
overwhelmed  the  Jewish  People  and  scattered  their  remnant 
over  the  face  of  the  earth. 

Perhaps  the  most  satisfactory  experiment  of  the  power  of 
a  true  and  heartfelt  Religion  to  render  practicable  and  en 
during   a   more   genial   and   trustful    Society  is  that  of  the 
Hernhutters  or  Moravians  of  Germany.    Their  example  has 
24 


278  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

fully  demonstrated  the  feasibility  of  combining  that  univer 
sal  Philanthropy  which  spurns  the  thought  of  individual  and 
exclusive  possessions  with  the  natural  sentiment  of  peculiar 
love  for  family  and  kindred,  so  as  to  preserve  and  cherish 
both.  They,  not  rejecting  but  exalting  the  basis  of  the 
family  union,  have  demonstrated  that  true  Marriage  is  loftier 
and  purer  than  Celibacy,  and  that  to  live  truly  and  wholly 
to  God  it  needs  not  that  we  contravene  or  contemn  any  part 
of  the  nature  wherewith  He  has  endowed. us. 

I  am  not  personally  acquainted  with  the  Moravians,  and 
know  not  wrhat  changes  may  have  been  wrought  in  their 
relations  to  each  other  by  time,  and  personal  ambition,  and 
the  contagion  of  evil  example.  It  may  be  that  an  intimate 
knowledge  of  them  might  somewhat  modify  the  admiration 
which  a  general  acquaintance  with  their  history  and  their 
character  is  calculated  to  excite.  But,  after  making  every 
allowance,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  Moravians  are  to  Christen 
dom  a  rebuke  and  an  example,  an  incitement  and  a  con 
demnation.  If  men  may  live,  have  lived,  a  life  of  perfect 
equality  and  brotherhood,  why  should  any  man  be  content 
to  live  otherwise  ? 

With  the  Shakers,  so  nick-named,  I  have  some  personal 
acquaintance,  and  I  am  not  ashamed  to  own  that  I  have  been 
instructed  and  cheered  by  them.  They  have  never  been 
fairly  appreciated  by  the  world.  Their  utter  condemnation 
of  Marriage  and  of  Individual  Property,  their  grotesque 
ceremonials  of  Divine  worship,  and  their  incessant  declama 
tion  against  all  departures  from  celibacy  as  impure  and  sin 
ful,  have  repelled  and  disgusted  nearly  all  who  are  not  of 
their  own  body.  But  might  not  a  more  expansive  philoso 
phy,  a  more  liberal  culture,  discover  in  these  very  excesses 
a  moral  worthy  of  the  gravest  attention  ?  Are  our  relations 
as  men  and  women  so  universally  pure  and  exalted  that  we 
may  rightly  despise  those  who,  unable  to  separate  the  pal 
pable  evil  from  the  latent  good,  reject  both  together  ?  Is 


THE  SOCIAL  ARCHITECTS.  279 

exclusive  property  so  beneficent  a  feature  of  our  Social 
Order,  as  practically  exemplified  around  us,  that  we  may 
fairly  stigmatize  those  who,  not  needing  its  incitements  to 
thrift  or  industry,  see  fit  to  decline  them  ?  The  peculiari 
ties  of  Shaker  worship  I  readily  abandon  to  the  ridicule  of 
the  cavil er,  only  wishing  that  theirs  wTere  the  only  absurdi 
ties  committed  in  attempting  to  honor  our  Father  in  Heaven, 
and  that  no  Religious  errors  more  popular  and  more  en 
during  than  theirs  were  worse  than  simply  ridiculous. 

When  all  that  may  be  said  against  these  simple-minded 
ascetics  has  been  freely  admitted,  there  is  yet  left  enough  in 
their  character  and  history  to  challenge  our  admiration. 
They  present  the  sublime  and  hope-inspiring  spectacle  of  a 
Community  founded  and  built  up  on  the  conquest  of  the 
most  inexorable  appetites.  Lust,  Avarice,  Ambition,  Re 
venge — these  are  not  merely  discountenanced  by  the  Social 
economy  of  the  Shakers,  but  this  economy  is  based  on  their 
entiro  crucifixion.  Nor  can  I  see  how  any  man  can  ration 
ally  conclude,  as  some  have  nevertheless  asserted,  that  all 
this  show  of  subduing  the  appetites  is  a  hypocrisy  and  a 
delusion.  I  can  conceive  no  earthly  motive  for  practicing 
so  much  outward  self-denial,  at  so  great  inconvenience,  and 
with  no  hope  of  honor,  or  popularity,  but  a  certainty  of  the 
reverse,  if  not  based  on  obedience  to  an  inward  conviction. 
The  uncharitable  theory  supposes  a  refinement  of  absurdity 
and  self-annoyance  which  never  yet  possessed  for  any  period 
the  brain  of  any  one  sane  man,  much  less  of  a  whole  com 
munity  for  ages.  Let  us,  then,  profit  by  the  lessons  which 
these  enthusiasts  read  us,  while  discarding  their  pardonable 
errors.  Let  us  remember  that  they  have  solved  for  us  the 
problem  of  the  possibility,  the  practicability,  of  a  Social  con 
dition  from  which  the  twin  curses,  Pauperism  and  Servitude, 
shall  be  utterly  banished.  They  have  shown  how  pleasant 
may  be  the  labors,  how  abundant  the  comforts,  of  a  commu 
nity  wherein  no  man  aspires  to  be  lord  over  his  brethren,  no 


280  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

man  grasps  for  himself,  but  each  is  animated  by  a  spirit  of 
devotion  to  the  common  good.  When  I  have  stood  among 
the  quiet  homes  of  this  unaspiring,  unpoetical  people,  and 
marked  how  they  have  steadily,  surely  advanced  from  abject 
poverty  to  amplest  competence — when  I  have  observed  how 
their  patient  but  never  excessive  toil  has  transformed  rugged 
barrenness  into  smiling  fertility  and  beauty,  how  could  I 
refrain  from  thinking  lightly  of  that  blind  dogmatism  which 
asserts  the  impossibility  of  inducing  men  to  labor  except 
for  their  own  selfish  gratification,  and  affirms  the  necessity 
of  the  stimulus  of  personal  acquisition  to  save  mankind  from 
sinking  back  into  the  darkness  and  the  destitution  of  bar 
barism  ? 

— I  have  not  time  to  speak  fully  of  the  first  of  the  Social 
Architects  of  our  own  day  who  attracted  the  attention  of 
the  learned  world  —  of  Claude  Henri,  Count  St.  Simon,  a 
descendant  of  Charlemagne  —  in  youth  a  soldier  of  our  own 
Revolution,  in  later  years  an  impassioned  seeker  of  all 
knowledge  possible  to  man,  and  an  ardent  explorer  of  every 
field  of  human  experience  ;  falling  at  length  into  extreme 
poverty,  and  dying  substantially  of  want;  .yet  insisting, 
through  all,  not  merely  on  the  practicability  but  the  cer 
tainty  and  imminence  of  a  great  Social  renovation,  to  be 
wrought  out  through  the  operation  of  Christian  Love.  This 
man,  without  securing  our  entire  respect,  challenges  our 
admiration.  Impulsive  and  sanguine  in  temperament,  he 
was  calculated  rather  to  inspire  others  than  to  direct  wisely 
the  movement  which  he  originated.  Blindly  confident  that 
Love  would  solve  all  difficulties,  redress  all  inequalities, 
reform  all  abuses  in  the  condition  of  mankind,  he  does  not 
seem  to  have  considered  means  at  all  requisite,  but  trusted 
to  the  simple  enunciation  of  the  sentiment.  Adversity,  des 
titution,  misery,  could  not  shake  the  convictions  of  a  better 
day  past  in  better  days  to  come ;  and  the  last  words  he  ut 
tered  to  the  few  friends  who  stood  around  his  desolate 


THE   SOCIAL   ARCHITECTS.  281 

death-bed  of  famine  joyously  proclaimed  '  THE  FUTURE  is 
OURS  !' 

His  few  surviving  disciples,  catching  new  inspiration  from 
a  faith  so  quenchless  and  sublime,  eagerly  rushed  to  the 
work  of  propagation,  and  soon  a  large  number  of  the  best 
spirits  of  Europe  did  reverence  to  the  genius  and  devotion 
of  St.  Simon.  But  the  fatal  defect  of  a  want  of  system,  of 
definite  plan,  of  seeking  to  base  Society  on  a  sentiment 
merely,  was  soon  evident.  The  little  band  who  gathered  to 
form  the  first  community  or  family  of  St.  Simonians  soon 
found  their  ardor  cooled  and  their  sentiment  of  brotherhood 
abated.  Differences  arose  which  they  had  no  appointed 
means  of  adjusting  or  preventing  ;  many  were  repelled,  while 
the  few  who  remained  are  reported  to  have  fallen  at  length 
into  gross  sensuality.  Their  dissolution  was  inevitable,  and, 
if  I  mistake  not,  was  hastened  by  the  Government,  which, 
regarding  St.  Simonism  as  a  new  and  specious  form  of  Jaco 
binic  attack  on  all  Public  Order,  broke  up  their  establish 
ment  on  a  charge  of  immorality. 

The  counterpart  of  St.  Simon's  is  exhibited  in  the  system 
of  Robert  Owen,  a  man  in  whom  it  is  hard  to  say  whether 
personal  virtues  or  speculative  errors  have  predominance. 
Mr.  Owen  relies  as  blindly  on  Reason  as  did  St.  Simon 
on  Love.  We  do  not  need  Law  ;  we  need  no  Religion  ; 
we  need  no  hope  of  personal  advantage,  to  induce  us  to 
do  whatever  is  just  and  beneficent,  says  Mr.  Owen  in  sub 
stance,  as  I  understand  him  ;  all  that  is  required  is  that  we 
shall  conduct  ourselves  rationally.  All,  indeed  ;  but  this  is 
very  much.  If  men  were  but  truly  reasonable,  they  would 
not  butcher  each  other,  whether  for  the  honor  which  neither 
party  possesses,  nor  the  territory  which  neither  needs  ;  they 
would  not  grasp,  nor  covet,  nor  degrade  themselves  by  all 
manner  of  unseemly  vices.  But  how  comes  it  that  so  few 
are  rational?  —  that  so  few  have  been  so  in  the  course  of  a 
hundred  generations  ? 
24* 


282  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

To  say  that  the  fault  is  in  Society  scarcely  helps  the  mat 
ter  toward  a  solution  :  for  this  Society  is  made  up  of  these 
very  men  and  women  whose  irrationality  is  our  puzzle,  and  is 
'  such  as  they  have  chosen  to  make  it.  The  problem  is  how 
Society  and  its  members  have  gone  so  far  wrong  altogether. 
Its  solution  Mr.  Owen  finds  in  the  existence  of  formal  Reli 
gion,  Priests  and  priestcraft,  superstition  and  blind  obedience 
to  the  irrational  behests  of  an  unknown  superior  being  — 
these,  according  to  Mr.  O.  are  the  causes  of  the  vice  and 
misery  wherewith  the  world  abounds.  These  convictions, 
no  doubt  earnestly  entertained,  have  cut  him  off  from  the 
sympathies  of  the  believing,  and  greatly  impaired  if  not 
destroyed  his  efficiency  as  an  apostle  of  Social  Reform. 
His  followers  are  now  mainly  confined  to  the  anti-Christian, 
and  the  general  scope  of  his  exertions  is  now  directed  quite 
as  much  against  Religion  as  against  Social  Evils.  I  regret 
this,  not  only  because  it  tends  to  prejudice,  and  has  already 
prejudiced,  thousands  against  all  plans  for  Social  meliora 
tion,  but  because  Mr.  Owen's  earlier  efforts  at  practical 
reform,  which  resulted  in  the  substitution  of  Temperance, 
Cleanliness,  Thrift,  Comfort,  Intelligence,  for  the  Drunken 
ness,  Filth,  Idleness,  Misery  and  Ignorance  which  had  pre 
viously  prevailed  in  the  manufacturing  district  of  New 
Lanark,  where  his  attention  wras  first  drawn  to  the  subject, 
proves  that  much  good  might  have  been  anticipated  from  his 
undivided  attention  to  the  wants  and  woes  of  his  fellow-men 
and  the  best  means  of  removing  them.* 

The  last  of  the  Social  Architects  to  whom  I  shall  invite 
your  attention  is  CHARLES  FOURIER;  and  if  I  ask  more  of  your 
time  for  a  development  of  the  nature  and  details  of  his  sys 
tem,  it  is  because  I  consider  his  plans  far  less  imperfect  in 
themselves  than  any  other,  and  more  likely  to  lead  to  benefi 
cent  results. 

*  For  many  of  the  foregoing  facts  I  am  indebted  to  the  writings  of  PARKE  GODWIN. 


FOURIER  AND  HIS  IDEAS.  283 

Fourier,  bom  at  Besangon,  in  France,  in  1772,  was 
trained  to  Commercial  pursuits  in  the  shop  of  his  father,  a 
woolen  draper,  where  at  five  years  of  age  he  was  punished 
for  telling  the  truth  to  a  customer,  whereby  a  purchase  was 
prevented.  From  this  time  his  infantine  mind  pondered 
anxiously  on  the  means  of  obviating  frauds  in  Commercial 
dealings,  and  of  establishing  uniform  Truth  and  Justice  in 
the  business  relations  of  mankind.  At  twenty-one  years  of 
age  he  engaged  in  Commerce  for  himself  on  a  capital  of 
$16,000,  his  portion  of  the  family  property,  which  was 
swept  away  before  the  close  of  that  year  in  the  siege  and 
capture  of  Lyons  during  the  convulsions  which  attended  the 
French  Revolution.  His  life  was  barely  saved  by  escape 
and  flight,  but  he  was  again  arrested  at  Besancon,  and,  to 
avoid  execution,  compelled  to  enter  the  army,  whence,  after 
two  years'  service,  he  was  discharged  on  account  of  ill 
health.  He  afterward  engaged  as  a  clerk  in  Marseilles, 
where  he  was  employed  to  throw  into  the  river  an  immense 
quantity  of  rice,  which  had  been  monopolized  in  a  season  of 
public  scarcity  in  the  hope  of  realizing  an  enormous  profit, 
but  which,  having  been  held  too  high  and  kept  too  long,  be 
came  worthless  and  unsalable.  Other  incidents  conspired 
to  stimulate  his  early  resolution  to  discover  the  means  of 
preventing  the  calamities  resulting  to  mankind  from  the 
frauds,  extortions,  falsehoods  and  adulterations  of  Com 
merce.  Pursuing  this  inquiry,  he  saw  the  field  widen  before 
him,  disclosing  and  embracing  the  broad  domain  of  Industry 
and  the  whole  Social  condition  of  our  race.  He  became 
convinced  that  nothing  short  of  a  Universal  Science  could 
solve  the  difficulties  and  obscurities  in  which  this  vast  sub 
ject  was  involved.  This  Science,  of  which  the  outline  was, 
as  he  believed,  discovered  by  him  in  1799,  was  first  set 
before  the  public  in  1808,  in  his  earliest  work,  the  '  Theory 
of  the  Four  Movements,'  or  of  Universal  Attraction  and  Re 
pulsion.  (This  was  four  years  previous  to  the  appearance 


284  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

of  Owen's  '  New  Views  of  Society.')  The  volume  which  wa& 
published  was  but  one  of  eight  of  which  the  whole  work  was 
to  have  consisted,  and  was  rather  a  prospectus  of  what  was 
to  follow,  than  a  complete  work.  Those  who  know  any 
thing  of  the  common  or  probable  fate  of  such  works  will  not 
need  to  be  told  that  the  other  seven  were  never  published — 
at  least  not  in  their  author's  lifetime.  I  have  heard  that  a 
copy  of  the  published  volume  was  submitted  to  Napoleon, 
then  in  the  zenith  of  his  power  and  glory.  The  relentless 
warrior,  then  involved  in  his  Spanish  War  and  about  to 
plunge  into  another  desperate  struggle  with  Austria,  bestowed 
but  little  thought  upon  it.  '  The  earth  must  first  be  plowed 
by  the  sword,'  said  he,  '  before  it  will  be  fitted  to  produce 
such  harvests  as  this  man  thinks  of.'  It  ivas  plowed  with 
the  sword  —  how  thoroughly,  let  Wagram,  and  Borodino, 
and  Leipsic,  and  Waterloo,  bear  witness.  In  the  event, 
Napoleon  was  hurled  to  his  island  rock,  having  found  no 
time  to  look  farther  into  the  undistinguished  citizen's  far- 
reaching  speculations  on  Divine  Benignity  and  Human  Des 
tiny. 

\  The  name  of  Fourier's  first  work  will  have  indicated  that, 
though  he  may  be  condemned  as  visionary,  he  can  not 
rationally  be  considered  narrow  or  superficial.  Though  his 
primary  object  was  the  prevention  of  Fraud  and  whatever 
induces  men  to  act  in  opposition  to  the  general  or  highest 
good,  his  researches  took  the  widest  scope,  and  he  undoubt- 
ingly  believed  that  their  result  was  the  discovery  of  the  laws 
of  Universal  Unity  or  those  Divinely  ordained  Harmonies 
by  a  knowledge  and  observance  of  which  all  discord,  all  evil, 
shall  ultimately  be  banished  from  the  earth.  Attraction  and 
Repulsion  being  the  laws  by  which  the  planets  are  held  in 
their  orbits,  oceans  in  their  beds,  and  the  multiform  races 
of  animals  nurtured  in  infancy  and  impelled  to  do  whatever 
is  proper  and  needful  to  them,  Fourier  held  that  these  same 
laws,  rightly  understood  and  duly  applied  to  the  Organiza- 


FOURIER  AND  HIS  IDEAS.  035 

lion  and  mechanism  of  Society,  will  there  produce  equally 
benign  results.  Some  of  the  more  important  of  Fourier's 
deductions  from  a  profound  and  critical  investigation  of  Na 
ture  I  have  very  freely  rendered  as  follows  : 

1.  The  Attractions  of  all  beings  are  proportioned  to  their 
Destinies.     Thus  every  animal  is  fitted  by  nature  and  in 
clination  for  the  element  he  is  to  inhabit  and   the  life  he  is 
destined  to  lead.     So  man  is  precisely  fitted  for  that  Social 
Harmony  for  which  he  was  created,  but  which   he   has  not 
hitherto  discovered  and  realized. 

2.  The   Harmonics  of  the    Universe  are  distributed   in 
Series,  stretching  from  the  highest  to  the   lowest  order  of 
beings.     Whatever  law  exists  for  one  exists  for  every  other, 
though  necessarily  modified  in  its  applications.     To  under 
stand  thoroughly  the  laws  which  govern  one  is  to  understand 
the  laws  which  govern  all. 

3.  The  Human  Race  exists  not  as  many  but  as  one.     The 
ignorance,  vice,  misery,  which  seem  to  afflict  but  a  part,  do 
truly  mar  the   happiness   of  all.     Hence  no  reform   can  be 
perfect  which  is  not  universal,  and  no  happiness  unalloyed 
until   all   evil  is  vanquished.     The  good  should  labor  and 
strive  for  nothing  less  than  the  emancipation  and  elevation  of 
the  Race. 

4.  All  needful  Labor  may  be  rendered  Attractive.     By 
this  he  means  not  merely  that  all  Labor  may,  by  proper  in 
ducements,    be    procured  without    constraint  or    degrading 
servitude,  but  that,  under  proper  arrangements,  men  will  love 
Labor  for  itself,  will  prize  it  as  an  intrinsic  good,  and  as  con 
tributing  to  health,  vigor,  enjoyment,  and  true  dignity.     To 
this   law  Fourier  admits  in   practice  some  exceptions,  con 
sisting    of  labors  now  requisite  which  are  intrinsically  re 
pulsive  and  disgusting,  for  which  he  prescribes  increased  re 
wards  and  the  highest  Social  honors.     All  other  Labor,  he 
insists,  may  and  will  be  performed  as  freely  and  willingly  a? 


286  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

hunting,  fishing,  and  other  sportive  functions  are  in  our  ex 
isting  Society. 

5.  The  Right  to  Labor,  and  to  the  fair  reward  of  Labor, 
inheres  in  all  men-,  and  can  not  be  withheld  from  any  without 
grievous  wrong  and  injury.  The  man  who  has  no  resource 
but  in  the  strength  of  his  sinews,  the  skill  of  his  fingers,  has 
a  positive  claim  on  the  possessors  of  Land  and  of  Property 
for  opportunity  to  earn  and  receive  a  subsistence. 

On  these  principles,  here  most  imperfectly  stated,  is  based 
Fourier's  system  of  Society. 

Let  me  endeavor  to  set  before  you  some  rude  idea  of  a 
community  constituted  according  to  his  suggestions.  But, 
in  order  that  you  may  understand  the  change  he  proposes, 
let  us  first  briefly  consider  the  society  he  would  supersede. 

A  New-England  rural  township  (answering  to  the  French 
commune,  and,  in  some  respects,  to  the  English  parish)  is, 
we  will  say,  a  tract  some  six  miles  square,  inhabited,  in  the 
average,  by  about  two  thousand  persons,  divided  into  four 
hundred  families.  Of  these  families  one-half  obtain  their 
subsistence  by  farming,  a  fourth  by  the  various  mechanical 
or  manufacturing  arts,  half  a  dozen  by  merchandise,  three  or 
four  by  religious  teaching,  two  or  three  by  law,  as  many  by 
physic  ;  a  few  are  so  wealthy  as  to  be  above  the  necessity  of 
labor  ;  some  are  paupers,  supported  by  the  town  ;  while  per 
haps  a  dozen  live  as  they  may  by  hiring  out  to  labor  when 
they  must,  and  picking  up  whatever  they  can,  at  all  times. 
Such  are  the  avocations  by  which  the  township  is  subsisted. 
It  would  be  a  liberal  estimate  to  say  that  three  hundred  good 
days'  work  are  performed  daily  on  the  average  in  all 
branches  of  productive  labor  among  these  two  thousand 
people,  while  perhaps  as  much  more  labor  is  performed  by 
women,  children,  and  servants  in  the  less  profitable  but  still 
essential  duties  of  the  household.  Out  of  the  products  of 
this  labor,  often  rudely  applied  and  unskillfully  directed,  the 
whole  community  must  obtain  such  a  livelihood  as  it  has. 


FOURIER  AND  HIS  IDEAS.  237 

Fourier's  system  would  make  of  these  four  hundred 
families  one  community  or  association,  inhabiting  one  vast, 
capacious  edifice,  (instead  of  four  hundred  scattered  dwell 
ings  of  all  grades  from  comfortable  to  miserable,)  with  half  a 
dozen  spaciously  and  perfectly  constructed  granaries,  instead 
of  three  hundred  Hi-adapted,  leaky  barns,  the  safe  harbors 
of  countless  destructive  vermin.  These  buildings  he  would 
locate  conveniently  to  the  choicest  lands  of  the  Association, 
and  near  its  water-power,  if  such  were  among  its  possessions. 
Instead  of  some  twenty  thousand  acres  of  land,  (the  area  of 
the  township,)  the  Association  would  require  less  than  half 
so  much,  but  of  this  the  arable  portion  would  be  brought  to 
and  kept  in  the  highest  state  of  fertility  and  cultivation.  The 
property  would  be  represented  by  stock,  as  in  a  railroad  or 
bank  ;  each  member,  whether  resident  or  not,  holding  shares 
and  receiving  dividends  according  to  the  amount  of  his  in 
vestment.  The  whole  of  the  produce  is  to  be  sold  or  valued 
annually,  a  proportionate  dividend  paid  to  the  capital,  and 
the  residue  apportioned  to  all  the  members,  according  to  the 
amount  and  efficiency  of  the  labor  and  skill  of  each.  Mean 
time,  education  is  zealously  prosecuted  in  the  Association, 
the  fittest  persons  being  chosen  for  teachers  in  the  various 
departments,  who  are  to  initiate  all  the  children,  not  merely 
into  the  rudiments  of  learning,  as  now  taught  in  schools,  but 
into  the  principles  of  Mechanics,  the  knowledge  of  Chemistry, 
Geology,  Botany,  but,  above  all,  into  the  love  and  practice 
of  Industry.  From  earliest  infancy  they  are  to  be  familiar 
ized  with  the  various  processes  of  Agriculture,  Manufactures, 
and  the  Arts  ;  they  are  to  see  Labor,  however  rude  or  repul 
sive,  the  main  source  of  honor  and  distinction,  as  well  as 
wealth  ;  and  they  are  to  be  thus  taught  to  seek  the  know 
ledge  and  skill  which  shall  fit  them  for  eminence  in  the 
domain  of  Industry,  and  to  arrest  the  earliest  opportunity  of 
winning  her  cherished  rewards.  Such  is  a  very  meager  out 
line  of  the  means  by  which  Labor  is  to  be  rendered  attractive. 


238  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

Among  the  material  advantages  reckoned  by  Fourier,  as 
inevitably  resulting  from  Association,  as  contrasted  with  the 
present  modes  of  life  and  industry,  are  these  : 

1.  A  saving  of  at  least  nine-tenths  of  the  fuel  now  required, 
of  the  land  set  apart  to  produce,  and  the  labor  needed  to 
prepare  it. 

2.  A  saving  of  nineteen-twentieths  of  the  fences  now  re 
quired,  covering   and  defacing  the  land,  and  requiring  end 
less  repairs,  materials,  and  attention. 

3.  A  saving  of  the  time  now  consumed  in  the  endless  ex 
changes   of  products  between  the  various  classes  of  pro 
ducers,  and  in  petty  trade. 

4.  A  saving  of  the  labor  now  misapplied  and  wasted,  by 
reason  of  the  want  of  skill  or  science  in   the  workman,  or 
rendered  relatively  inefficient  by  the  want  of  the  best  labor- 
saving  machinery.     The  small  farmer  can  not  afford  to  pur 
chase,  for  his  few  acres,  all  the  costly  implements   of  the 
most  skillful  modern  husbandry. 

5.  A  saving  of  three-fourths  of  the  labor  now  required  for 
the  preparation  of  food,  and  in  the  various  departments  of 
the  household.     It  is  evident  that  these  would   require  far 
less  labor  in  one  house  than  in  five  hundred,  and  that  the 
food  of  two  thousand  persons  may  be  prepared  in  three  or 
four  spacious  apartments,  amply  supplied  with  every  conve 
nience,  with  infinitely  less  labor  than  in  four  hundred  petty 
kitchens  with  scarcely  any  conveniences  at  all.   Whether  the 
members  shall  partake  of  their  food  at  common  tables,  in 
small  groups,  or  in  families,  is  to  depend  on  the  free  choice 
of  each,  the  actual  cost  being   ascertained  and  charged  to 
each  in  every  case. 

6.  A  saving  of  the  entire  services  of  those  now  employed 
in  the  unproductive  functions  of  retail  trade,  and  of  most  of 
those   now  living   by  Law,   Physic,   &c.,  &c.     One  good 
Physician   would  be  enough,  one  Lawyer,  it  is  hoped,  too 
much,  for  an  Association,  while  fewer  but  better  teachers 


FOURIER  AND  HIS  IDEAS.  o6j 

tiian  are  now  required,  would  impart  a  far  wider  range  of 
instruction  to  the  young. 

These  are  but  a  part  of  the  economies  insisted  on  by 
Fourier,  who  is  sanguine  in  the  faith  that  the  annual  product 
of  the  community  would  be  four-fold  what  it  now  is,  while 
an  immense  saving,  on  the  other  hand,  of  property  now  de 
stroyed  by  waste,  and  ignorance,  and  subdivision,  and  want 
of  skill,  is  also  predicted. 

The  general  results  which  he  affirms  are  these : 

1.  All  needful  labor  skilfully  and  cheerfully  performed. 
In  so  large  a  community  there  would  be  found  capacity  for 
every  duty  and  a  duty  for  every  capacity,  so  that  each  indi 
vidual  would  find  that  employment  best  suited  to  his  abilities, 
and  which,  by  a  general  though   not  inflexible  rule,  would 
be  to  him  most  attractive.     In   the  exceptional  instances  of 
duties  to  be  performed  which   no  one  would  undertake  of 
choice,  their   recompense  is  to  be  raised  until  some  one  is 
induced  to  undertake  them. 

2.  Every  individual,  infants,  idiots  and  disabled  persons 
exccptcd,  will  be  secured  the  means  of  earning  an  ample  sub 
sistence  and  of  acquiring  property  ahead.     The  vast  econ 
omies  and  vastly  increased  production    of  the   community 
are  to  redound  to  the  benefit,  not  mainly  of  capital,  but  of 
labor.     Each    man,    woman,    and    child  is    guarantied   the 
fullest  opportunity  to  labor  and  earn,  in  the  vocation  of  his 
or  her  choice,  as  nearly  as  may  be,  and  with  assurance  of  the 
just  and  fair  reward  of  his  or  her  exertions.    To  women  and 
children,  gardening,  horticulture,  the  care  of  fruits,  and  the 
prosecution   of  a  great  variety  of  manufactures,  in  addition 
to  the  cares  of  the  household,  proffer  industrial  careers  as 
ample,   varied   and  independent  as   those   of  men.     With 
each  individual  an  account  is  kept,  in  which  he  is  charged 
the  fair  cost  of  his  subsistence,  the  rent  of  his  apartments, 
and  whatever  he  draws  from  the  common  stores,  while  he  is 

25 


290  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

credited  for  his  labor  or  the  fruits  of  that  labor,  whether  used 
by  the  Association  or  sold,  at  its  fair  market  price. 

3.  The  most  thorough  Education  is  guarantied  to  every 
individual.  The  schools,  though  ample,  well-taught,  and 
never  intermitted,  are  not,  according  to  Fourier,  the  main 
sources  of  Knowledge  to  the  child ;  but  the  fields,  the  edi 
fices,  work-shops,  manufactories,  and  all  industrial  processes 
are  to  be  rendered  his  books  and  his  monitors.  From  ear 
liest  infancy,  a  thirst  for  information  is  to  be  studiously 
excited.  The  child  is  to  be  trained  to  seek  honor  in  useful 
ness,  pleasure  in  duty,  and  to  plead  for  instruction  in  letters 
and  in  arts,  as  the  means  of  enjoyment,  of  efficiency  and  of 
personal  distinction.  —  To  become  familiar  with  some  new 
truth,  some  new  process,  some  application  of  science  to  the 
promotion  of  human  well-being,  is  his  daily  step-stone  on 
the  path  to  manhood  and  its  honors.  The  Library  of  the 
Association,  open  to  all,  will  afford  the  amplest  stores  of 
knowledge  to  old  and  young,  while  stated  meetings  of  those 
engaged  in  each  branch  of  industry  will  be  held  to  receive 
and  to  impart  the  results  of  experience,  of  observation,  and 
of  study,  until  the  knowledge  and  skill  of  each  shall  be 
combined  in  the  understanding  and  practice  of  all. 

Such  are  some  rude,  imperfect  outlines  of  Fourier's  sys 
tem.  Of  the  means  by  which  he  proposes  to  secure  to  each 
his  just  dividend  of  the  aggregate  product — to  each  family 
the  domestic  privacy  and  sanctity  of  its  own  apartments — 
to  each  individual  or  family  the  freedom  of  living  more  or 
less  sumptuously  according  to  ability  or  inclination,  I  have 
not  room  to  speak  in  this  lecture.  Unlike  every  other  nota 
ble  Social  architect,  from  Plato  to  Owen,  Fourier  is  wholly 
averse  to  communism  or  the  denial  of  individual  property  as 
utterly  subversive  of  justice,  not  merely,  but  of  individual 
freedom.  Basing  his  system  on  a  rigorous  analysis  of  the 
Divine  economy  as  evinced  in  Nature,  he  holds  that  diver 
sity,  not  uniformity,  is  the  fundamental  law  to  which  all  hu- 


FOURIER  AND  HIS  IDEAS.  291 

man  regulation  must  conform.  Many  are  indifferent  to 
present  gratification  but  eager  for  permanent  acquisition ; 
others  are  careless  of  the  future,  so  that  the  present  be  but 
joyous.  Some  choose  to  devote  a  large  proportion  of  their 
income  to  dress ;  others  to  food ;  others  delight  in  spacious 
and  richly  furnished  apartments.  Some  grudge  every  mo 
ment  abstracted  from  their  work ;  others  regret  rather  those 
hours  wherein  they  mmt  work.  Fourier,  insisting  that  work 
may  be  rendered  as  attractive  as  play  now  is,  leaves  to  each 
individual  the  perfect  control  of  his  hours  and  their  uses,  the 
Association  taking  care  only  that  his  earnings  shall  equal 
the  cost  of  his  subsistence  —  in  default  of  \vhich,  if  not  caused 
by  sickness  or  other  calamity,  his  stock  is  sold  to  make  up 
the  deficiency,  until  it  has  entirely  disappeared,  when  his 
rights  of  residence  and  membership  are  at  an  end. 

In  short,  while  St.  Simon  bases  his  Social  fabric  on  uni 
versal  Love,  and  Owen  on  calm,  enlightened  Reason,  Fou 
rier  builds  on  absolute  and  carefully  administered  Justice  — 
a  justice  which  secures  to  each  his  own,  whether  of  Develop 
ment,  of  Opportunity,  or  of  Recompense.  Give  every  one 
the  work  for  which  he  is  best  fitted,  give  him  knowledge 
and  skill,  and  guaranty  him  the  full  reward  of  his  exertions  ; 
but  disturb  not  the  foundations  of  Property,  nor  transfer  to 
any  one,  save  in  charity,  the  earnings  of  another.  This 
keen  sense  of  justice  is  the  basis  of  his  hostility  to  Com 
merce,  other  than  the  wholesale  interchange  of  the  products 
of  different  climes  and  communities.  Traders,  as  such, 
have  no  place  in  his  Social  economy.  The  extent  and 
minuteness  of  his  arrangements  to  obviate  the  possibility  of 
injustice,  and  to  reconcile  perfect  order  and  harmony  with 
ihe  largest  individual  freedom,  can  only  be  apprehended  by 
those  who  are  familiar  with  his  works. 

Yet  I  could  not,  with  any  confidence  of  a  favorable  result, 
invite  the  mass  of  readers  to  study  Fourier's  system  in 
his  own  writings.  Replete  as  they  are"  with  profound  ob- 


292  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

servation  and  the  most  searching  analytical  criticism,  they 
will  not  impress  happily  the  casual  or  careless  student.  The 
author  is  too  positive  in  his  self-assurance — too  dogmatic  — 
too  contemptuous  in  his  regard  for  whatever  opposes  his 
views.  He  has  no  adequate  patience  with  our  difficulty  in 
seeing  through  his  spectacles  on  the  first  trial.  A  lonely, 
obscure,  thoughtful,  studious  man,  treated  with  obloquy,  or 
more  commonly  a  disdainful  silence,  by  the  world's  flattered 
teachers  and  arbiters,  as  though  he  were  an  idiot  or  a  mad 
man,  we  may  not  wonder  but  must  regret  that  he  returned 
scorn  for  scorn,  and  that  many  of  his  later  works  are  marred 
by  fierce  denunciations  of  the  duplicity,  barrenness,  and 
sophistry  of  the  leaders  of  public  opinion. 

The  world  without  and  that  within  such  a  man  must  pre 
sent  a  strange  and  striking  contrast.  Around  him  poverty, 
neglect,  derision  —  a  settled  hostility  or  a  more  humiliating 
indifference ;  within,  the  consciousness  of  mighty  discov 
eries —  of  truths  competent  now  and  certain  ultimately  to 
transform  and  electrify  mankind.  Around  him  obstruction 
and  want — perhaps  hunger  and  cold;  within,  the  deep  con 
viction  that  he  had  discovered  the  means  ordained  of  God 
for  banishing  want  from  the  earth,  by  quadrupling  produc 
tion,  diminishing  wasteful  consumption,  renovating  and  beau 
tifying  the  earth,  until  at  last  even  the  Polar  Ices  should  be 
dissolved,  and  a  joyous,  exhilarating  spring-time  envelop 
our  planet.  The  reclamation  of  deserts,  of  pestilential 
marshes,  of  wildernesses  and  snow-capped  mountains,  until 
all  earth  shall  praise  Heaven  by  comforting  and  blessing 
mankind  —  all  these,  and  many  more  dizzying,  are  among 
the  ultimate  consequences  of  Social  Reorganization  antici 
pated  by  Fourier. 

This  sanguine  spirit  waited  eight  years  after  his  first  work 
appeared  for  a  disciple — perhaps  for  his  first  attentive 
reader.  Six  years  later,  he  published  his  second  work, 
which  was  met,  like  the  former,  by  absolute  silence  and  in- 


FOURIER  AND  HIS  IDEAS.  293 

difference  on  the  part  of  the  press,  and  so  remained  unknown 
to  the  public.  It  was  not  till  ten  years  afterward,  on  the 
dispersion  of  the  St.  Simonian  fraternity  in  1832,  that  he 
obtained  any  general  hearing.  Then  a  considerable  number 
were  attracted  by  his  theory,  a  journal  was  started,  and,  in 
spite  of  his  earnest  remonstrances,  an  estate  was  purchased 
near  Paris,  and  an  attempt  made  at  practical  Association. 
It  failed  at  the  outset  for  want  of  means  ;  though  if  this  had 
been  surmounted,  the  want  of  Knowledge  and  of  fit  men 
would  doubtless  have  been  found  as  serious  an  obstacle  to 
success.  The  unthinking  many  were  repelled  by  the  failure, 
of  which  they  neither  knew  nor  cared  to  know  the  reasons  ;  the 
judicious  few  stood  unmoved.  Their  journal  was  kept  up 
and  its  circulation  extended  ;  and,  abandoning  the  idea  of 
practical  experiment  until  knowledge  shall  have  been 
adequately  diffused  and  the  confidence  of  men  of  wealth  and 
influence  obtained,  they  are  still  laboring  in  the  cause 
with  spirit  and  success.  In  France,  they  number  thousands, 
including  many  eminent  in  station,  in  intellect,  and  in  worth; 
in  England,  they  have  made  some  progress  ;  in  Germany 
more,  though  there  are  they  checked  by  the  prevalence  of 
Communism  ;  in  this  country,  the  doctrines  of  Fourier  have 
gained  adherents  in  every  State,  and  in  some  sections  in 
almost  every  neighborhood,  and  are  still  making  steady  prog 
ress.  Meantime,  Fourier  himself  has  gone  down  to  the 
grave  in  obscurity,  but  in  undoubting  conviction  of  having 
pointed  the  way  to  a  loftier  and  happier  career  for  Humanity 
on  Earth.  He  died  in  1837. 

I  have  thus  hurriedly  traced  the  outlines  of  Fourier's  life 
and  Social  System — the  Industrial  and  Economical  rather 
than  the  Intellectual  and  Spiritual  features  of  the  latter.  I 
doubt  not  that  I  have  exposed  him  to  objections  which  a 
better  knowledge  of  his  works  would  remove  ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  I  have  passed  over  many  of  his  speculations  on 
subjects  having  no  necessary  connection  with  Social  Reform 
25* 


294  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

that  would  be  likely  to  provoke  opposition.  He  was  a  bold 
adventurer  in  unknown  seas,  and  whether  he  brought  back 
more  pearls  or  bubbles  I  need  not  here  discuss.  I  stop  not 
for  criticism  nor  panegyric  even  on  his  Social  theory,  though 
it  seems  to  me  to  invite  the  one  and  deserve  the  other. 
What  time  I  may  trespass  farther  on  your  attention  shall 
rather  be  devoted  to  the  Living  and  the  Practical  —  to  a  con 
sideration  of  our  own  duties,  our  hopes,  and  our  respon 
sibilities  in  connection  with  Social  Reform. 

—  The  famous  pamphlet  of  the  Abbe  Sieyes  on  the  Third 
Estate  or  Commons  of  France,  which  gave  so  powerful  an 
initial  impulse  to  the  Great  Revolution,  assumed  to  propose 
and  answer  three  questions  —  'What  is  the  Third  Estate? 
Nothing.  What  might  it  be  ?  Everything.  What  should 
it  be  ?  Something?  In  a  kindred  spirit  I  am  accustomed 
to  regard  the  various  efforts  in  our  day  for  effecting  a  radical 
Social  Reform.  *  *  *  * 

What,  then,  may  we  reasonably  hope  from  these  efforts  ? 

If  this  question  contemplate  only  immediate  results,  I  shall 
be  constrained  to  answer,  Very  little.  True,  I  know  many 
noble  men  and  women  engaged  in  these  enterprises,  and 
who  bring  to  the  work  a  spirit  worthy  of  our  reverent  admi 
ration.  These  can  not  fail,  though  the  enterprises  with 
which  they  are  connected  may.  If  all  of  this  stamp  were 
united  in  one  undertaking,  with  means  at  all  adequate  to 
its  prosecution,  I  should  indulge  ardent  hopes.  But  I  can 
not  put  aside  the  impress  which  sixty  centuries  of  grasping 
and  suffering,  of  avarice  and  want,  have  made  on  the  Human 
Character.  I  can  not  forget  that  these  who  are  now  embark 
ing  it  would  seem  so  bravely,  so  heroically,  in  the  various 
efforts  to  realize  a  higher  and  less  sordid  Social  condition, 
have  lived  from  infancy  amid  scenes  and  under  influences 
whereof  Self  was  the  master-spirit,  and  the  ever-cherished 
even  if  unuttered  maxim,  '  Look  out  for  Number  One.' 
Some  have  doubtless  risen,  above  these  influences  ;  others 


FOURIER  AND  HIS  IDEAS.  295 

mistakenly  think  they  have.  But  the  great  majority,  even 
of  those  who  are  ready  to  embark  in  undertakings  to  reform 
Society,  have  not  yet  reformed  themselves.  The  motive  which 
impels  them,  even  in  this,  is  at  bottom  selfish  —  the  hope  of 
ease,  of  abundance,  of  consequence,  or  of  fame.  As  this  sel 
fish  expectation  is  disappointed,  and  disappointed  it  must  be, 
since  no  great  and  true  Reform  was  ever  effected  except 
through  privations  and  sacrifices  —  their  zeal  will  grow  cold, 
their  enthusiasm  vanish,  their  faith  die  out.  Their  underta 
kings  will  fail,  and  they  abandon  the  cause  in  the  full  con 
viction  that  the  idea  is  chimerical  and  can  never  be  realized. 

And,  besides,  we  must  consider  that  the  individuals 
easiest  induced  to  embark  in  any  novel  enterprise  like  this, 
are  usually  those  who  have  not  been  strikingly  successful  in 
their  undertakings  hitherto,  and  who  may  fairly  be  presumed 
less  fitted  than  many  others  to  deserve  and  command  suc 
cess  generally.  The  fortunate,  the  skilful,  the  thrifty,  are 
usually  content  to  remain  as  they  are.  They/eeZ  no  neces 
sity,  and  are  slow  to  perceive  any,  for  a  radical  change  in 
Society.  These  are  seldom  tempted  to  embark  in  novel 
enterprises,  while  the  luckless,  the  portionless,  the  unskilled 
in  the  crafts  of  trade  and  the  ways  of '  getting  on,'  are  sure 
to  be  well  represented.  I  do  not  notethis  distinction  to  cast 
reproach  on  any.  Every  observer  is  aware  that  the  faculty 
of  making  headway  in  the  world  is  something  quite  distinct 
from  moral  qualities,  good  or  bad.  But  it  is  fair,  it  is 
essential,  that  this  distinction  should  be  borne  in  mind. 

I  am  not  surprised,  therefore,  to  hear  of  the  failure  of 
most  of  the  rash,  ill-considered,  ill-provided  attempts  in  our 
day  to  furnish  practical  models  of  a  better  Social  condition. 
I  should  have  been  greatly  disapppointed  if  they  had  all 
succeeded.  Of  those  which  remain  to  buffet  the  gales  of 
adverse  or  sport  in  the  breezes  of  prosperous  fortune,  a 
part  will  doubtless  share  the  fate  of  those  already  broken  up  ; 
whi'ie  some.  I  think,  are  destined  to  survive  and  ultimately 


296  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

flourish.  But  this  is  conjecture  only ;  while  the  fact  that 
men  have  lived,  do  live,  in  a  more  intimate  and  trustful  So 
ciety  than  the  mass  of  us  believe  possible,  is  abundantly  es 
tablished.  Apart  from  the  familiar  examples  of  the  Mora 
vians,  the  Shakers,  there  are  in  this  country  communities 
which  have  existed  twenty,  thirty,  and  forty  years,  holding 
all  things  in  common,  and  finding  thrift,  economy,  abun 
dance,  happiness,  freedom,  in  their  chosen  condition.  Of 
these  are  the  settlement  known  as  Rapp's  or  Economy,  in 
Beaver  Co.,  Pennsylvania,  that  at  Zoar,  Ohio,  and  one  or 
two  others.  They  do  not  appear  to  have  been  held  together 
by  any  special  sympathy  or  fervor  of  Religious  feeling,  nor 
by  any  disposition  to  act  as  models  for  the  guidance  and 
imitation  of  mankind.  They  have  no  theory  to  commend, 
no  anxiety  to  make  proselytes.  In  each  case,  the  Social 
appears  to  have  been  preferred  to  the  Individual  economy 
from  a  mixture  of  choice  and  necessity,  and  in  each  it  has 
fully  answered  the  expectations  of  its  choosers.  Abundance 
and  thrift  have  amply  rewarded  the  moderate  labor  of  the 
associates,  and  no  reason  has  been  given  us  to  doubt  their 
entire  satisfaction. 

I  think,  then,  we  may  consider  this  fact  already  establish 
ed,  that  a  more  intimate  and  trustful  Social  relation  is  prac 
ticable  than  that  which  prevails  among  the  mass  of  mankind 
—  that  men  may  labor  and  possess  in  common  without 
jealousy,  envy  or  strife — at  any  rate,  without  an  increase 
thereby  of  these  cankers  of  existence.  The  vulgar  cavil 
that  no  house  is  large  enough  for  two  families,  is  as  thor 
oughly  refuted  by  one  demonstration  as  it  would  be  by  a 
million  repetitions  of  it.  Association  in  life  and  industry  is 
not  a  chimera  —  it  is  not  a  bubble — it  is  not  a  mere  possi 
bility,  but  palpably  and  certainly  practicable. 

But  what  then  ?  Are  we  to  abandon  our  old-fashioned 
and  not  altogether  comfortless  dwellings,  our  settled  ways 
and  maxims,  because  a  different  Social  economy  has  been 


FOURIER  AND  HIS  IDEAS.  297 

found  practicable  ?  Certainly  not.  There  are  many  thou 
sands  of  us  whose  condition  could  hardly  be  improved  by 
such  a  change,  and  whose  sense  of  security  and  comfort 
would  surely  not  be.  There  is  many  a  humble  home  of 
which  the  happiness  of  the  inmates  would  not  be  enhanced 
by  a  transfer  to  the  stateliest  palace,  even  though  a  few 
crowns  and  scepters  were  to  be  thrown  in  to  sweeten  the 
bargain.  We  need  not  disparage  the  old  in  order  to  com 
mend  the  new.  There  is  no  probability  that  the  mass  of  the 
well-placed  and  comfort-girded  thousands  will  desert  their 
happy  homes  to  accept  any  which  Association  may  proffer 
them,  nor  that  they  would  be  gainers  by  it  if  they  did. 
Let  all  who  are  satisfied  and  useful  where  they  are  remain 
so  ;  they  are  very  unlikely  to  receive  benefit  or  do  good  by 
rushing  into  untried  and  to  them  most  unnatural  relations. 
Unspeakable  is  the  worth  of  Habit — of  the  fact  that  matters 
have  been  so  ordered,  or  have  so  ordered  themselves,  for  a 
time  whereof  the  memory  of  Man  runneth  not  to  the  con 
trary.  Custom  not  only  serves  to  reconcile  us  to  privations 
and  sufferings,  but  it  has  even  impelled  mean  men  to  do 
heroic  deeds,  hardly  conscious  that  such  was  their  nature. 
For  the  great  mass  of  human  beings,  it  ig  eminently  desi 
rable  that  they  should  jog  on  as  nearly  as  possible  in  the 
paths  worn  smooth  and  plain  by  their  ancestors'  footsteps, 
profiting  much  by  the  secondary  instinct  which  the  usage  of 
successive  generations  has  called  into  being,  until  something 
better  shall  be  plainly  demonstrated.  Well  is  it  for  them 
and  for  their  race  if  '  the  wisdom  of  our  ancestors'  be  not 
invoked  by  this  immense  class  to  support  and  justify  their 
adherence  to  the  folly  which  has  encrusted  and  obscured  that 
wisdom,  so  that  they  may  be  found  admiring  less  the  block 
of  amber  than  the  fly  therein  imbedded. 

But  on  the  other  hand  there  is  a  small  number — very 
small,  it  may  be,  but  I  think  it  increases — to  whom  the  old 
ways,  the  old  purposes  of  life,  have  become  impossible  of 


298  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

pursuit — who  must  breathe  more  freely  or  be  stifled — who 
can  not  live  longer  to  merely  personal  ends — who  will 
readily  dig  ditches,  if  that  be  the  most  useful  employment 
which  solicits  them,  but  who  must  do  even  this  heroically, 
not  sordidly,  or  not  at  all.  They  are  ready  to  welcome 
drudgery,  privation,  obscurity,  but  not  willing  that  the  cov 
ering  and  cherishing  of  their  own  bodies  shall  be  the  pur 
pose  of  their  life-long  struggle.  To  this  small  class  the  idea 
of  a  Social  Reform  commends  itself  with  irresistible  force ; 
they  can  not  banish  it  from  their  minds ;  they  can  not  even 
affect  indifference  to  it.  Need  I  urge  that  these  should  be 
aided  from  the  abundant  wealth  of  the  contented  class  to 
give  their  several  plans  a  fair  trial  ?  There  is  no  possible 
shape  of  evil,  no  suggestion  of  depravity,  which  has  not 
been  bodied  forth  in  acts ;  why  should  sanguine  hopes  of 
universal  good  alone  be  coldly  set  aside  as  fantastic  and 
chimerical  ? 

And  then,  again,  that  immense  multitude  whose  lives  are 
but  a  weary  round  of  incessant  and  meagerly  requited 
drudgery — who  herd  in  hovels,  exposed  to  the  visitation  of 
every  annoyance  and  discomfort — with  whom  the  contem 
plation  of  the  miseries  incident  to  their  filthy,  noisome,  un- 
ventilated  workshops  .is  forbidden  by  the  overmastering 
horror  of  the  apprehended  time  when  even  this  employment 
shall  vanish,  taking  their  subsistence  along  with  it — shall 
not  the  thought  of  their  world-wide  sufferings  impel  us  to 
do  something?  The  universal  spectacle  of  Wealth  and 
Poverty  increasing  side  by  side  —  of  side-boards  of  glitter 
ing  plate  accumulating  here,  while  the  thin  diet  there  grows 
more  meager  and  scanty — all  this  is  calculated  to  compel 
reflection,  at  least.  The  labor  of  this  generation  produces 
nearly  twice  as  much  as  did  a  like  amount  a  century  ago ; 
yet  that  immense  proportion  of  the  laborers  who  must  sub 
sist  on  the  Wages  of  rude  manual  toil  live  no  better  as  a 
class — in  the  average  even  worse,  than  of  old.  In  the 


FOURIER  AND  HIS  IDEAS.  299 

great  City  of  my  residence,  a  metropolis  of  wealth,  of  com 
merce,  civilization,  art  and  enterprise,  not  less  than  forty 
thousand  human  beings  at  this  moment  vainly  seek  employ 
ment —  have  sought  it  for  days  and  weeks  without  success, 
and  at  length  almost  without  hope.  Shall  this  be  accepted 
as  the  final,  God-ordained  condition  of  Humanity  on  earth  ? 
I  can  not,  will  not  believe  it.  No  :  through  effort  and  vicis 
situde,  through  aspiration  and  stern  resolve,  through  the 
flashes  of  electric  Genius  and  the  slow  approaches  of  pro 
saic  Calculation,  —  if  need  be,  through  reproach  and  oblo 
quy —  the  humane  and  the  Christian  must  patiently  toil  on, 
until  at  length,  with  bent  frames  and  beaded  brows,  they 
shall  have  attained  the  summit  of  the  Mount  of  Vision,  and 
may  thence  perceive  with  exulting  gladness  the  glories  of 
the  second  Eden. 


IN    MEMORY 

OF  THE 

MARTYRS  TO  HUMAN  LIBERTY, 

WHO  FELL 

DURING  THE  SIEGE,  MAY  AND  JUNE,  1849. 

AS 

DEFENDERS    OF    ROME, 

AGAINST 
THE  MACHINATIONS  OF  DESPOTISM,  THE  WILES  OF  AMBITIOUS  HYPOCRISY, 

*"  AND 

THE  INFERNAL   PERFIDY  OF  MONARCHICAL  VILLAINS  WHO  HAVE  STOLEN 
POWER  IN  FRANCE, 

BY  MEANS   OF 

HOLLOW  PROFESSIONS  OF  THAT  REPUBLICANISM  THEY  MORTALLY  HATE, 

AND   SWEARING  FIDELITY    TO    THAT  CONSTITUTION  WHICH 

THEY  HASTENED  MOST  GLARINGLY  TO  VIOLATE  ; 

Thus  Richly  deserving", 

The  loathing  detestation  of  the  honest  and  just. 

NOT  SO  THEY  f 

WHO     FELL     ON     THE     RAMPARTS     OF     ROME, 

sternly   Struggling 

AGAINST  OVERWHELMING  NUMBERS,  AGAINST  AMPLE  MUNITIONS,  AGAINST  FATE  : 

THEIR  HIGHEST  HOPE  THAT  IN  THEM,  LIVING  OR  DEAD,  THE 

SACRED  CAUSE  SHOULD  NOT  BE  DISHONORED. 

Their  proudest  wish 

THAT  FREEDOM'S  CHAMPIONS  THROUGHOUT  THE  WORLD  MIGHT 
RECOGNIZE  THEM  AS  BRETHREN, 

Nobly   Dying 
THAT  SURVIVING  MILLIONS  MAY  DULY  ABHOR  TYRANNY  AND  LOVE  LIBERTY : 

Closing  their  eyes  serenely, 

IN  THE  GENEROUS  FAITH  THAT  RIGHTS  FOR  ALL,  DOMINION  FOR  NONE. 
WILL  SOON  REVIVIFY  THE  EARTH  BAPTIZED  IN  THEIR  BLOOD. 

Stay,  heedless  Wanderer! 
DEFILE  NOT  WITH  LISTLESS  STEP  THE  ASHES  OF  HEROES ! 

BUT 

OUT  THE  RELICS  OF  THESE  MARTYRS   SWEAR  A  DEEPER  AND   STERNER 
HATE  TO  EVERY  FORM  OF  OPPRESSION. 

Here  learn  to  Feel 
A  DEARER  LOVE  FOR  ALL  WHO  STRIVE  FOR  LIBERTY. 

Here  breathe  a  Prayer 

FOR   THE   SPEEDY   TRIUMPH   OF   RIGHT   OVER   MIGHT, 
LIGHT  OVER  NIGHT; 

AND  FOR  ROME'S   FALLEN  DEFENDERS, 

THAT  THE  GOD  OF  THE  OPPRESSED  AND  AFFLICTED  MAY  HAVE  THEM 
IN  HIS  HOLY  KEEPING. 

"They  never  fail  who  die 

In  a  great  cau§e;  the  block  may  soak  their  gore; 
Their  heads  may  sodden  in  the  sun ;  their  limbs 
Be  strung  to  city  gates  and  castle  walls— 
But  still  their  spirit  walks  abroad." 

BTBOK— Marino  Falitro,  Act  II.,  Scene  2. 


DEATH  BY  HUMAN  LAW.  301 


XI. 

BRIEF  REFORM  ESSAYS. 


DEATH   BY   HUMAN   LAW. 

DEATH  is  the  universal  doom.     The  time,  the  mode  of 

individual  decease  are  to  human  vision  inscrutable  ;  the  event 

is  inevitable.     We  do  not  know  whether  it  is  better  for  us 

to  die   early  or  later  —  by  sudden  violence  or   slow  decay. 

Many  who  die  at  twenty  are  doubtless  more  fortunate  in  life 

and  death   than  others  who   lived    to   eighty.     Many  who 

perished  by  flood   or  fire,  by  famine  or  frost,  by  rack   or 

poison,  by  ax  or  halter,  are  more  to  be  envied  than  the  mass 

of  those  who  lounged  through  a  long  life  of  pomp  and  ease, 

and  breathed  their  last  on  beds  of  down  amid   the  tears  of 

idolizing  thousands.     Who  can  say  that   a  man   should  be 

pitied  or  congratulated  that  he  is  doomed  to  die  to-morrowj? 

Society  must  live  though   individuals   should  die.     All 

speculation  on  the  right   of  the  community  to  take   human 

life  is  preposterous.     Self-preservation  is  the  primal  law  ; 

and  if  the  death  of  any  individual  is  necessary  to  the  safety 

of  the  commonwealth,  he  must  die.  *   I  doubt  whether  there 

is  one  theoretical  denier  of  the  right  of  society  to  take  life 

who  —  if  he  saw  a  man  forcing  his  way  into  the  window  of 

his  family's   sleeping  apartment,  and  knew  that  the  ruffian 

would,  in   order  to  rob   securely,  murder  the  mother  and 

babes  there  lying  in  unconscious  slumber — would  hesitate 

26 


302  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

to  catch  up  a  rifle  and  shoot  the  burglar  dead  on  the  spot. 
This  would  imply  no  malice  toward  the  victim  of  his  own 
evil  designs  —  no  desire  to  harm  him — no  wrath,  even  — 
but  a  simple  choice  that  of  two  evils  the  greater  should  be 
averted  by  interposing  the  lesser. 

Thus  we  hear  that  in  the  California  of  1849  men  were 
frequently  hung  by  a  summary  process  for  simple  theft — 
I  do  not  say  wantonly,  nor  cruelly*  There  were  no  courts, 
no  sheriffs,  no  prosecutors,  grand  juries,  police,  nor  prisons. 
The  legal  forms  of  indictment,  arraignment,  trial,  sentence, 
and  punishment,  were  clearly  unattainable.  Yet  theft  must 
somehow  be  repressed,  though  at  the  cost  of  guilty  or  even 
innocent  lives.  To  allow  it  impunity  and  triumph  would  be 
to  arrest  the  arm  of  Labor,  palsy  Production,  Trans 
portation,  Commerce,  and  doom  the  entire  community  to 
ruin  and  starvation.  Yes,  though  it  were  certain  that  a 
dozen  innocent  men  would  be  put  to  death  under  the  Lynch- 
law  which  precedes  and  partially  subserves  the  end  of  the 
regular  Administration  of  Justice,  we  must  still  say, 
Welcome  this  dire  alternative  —  welcome  anything  rather  than 
Anarchy,  chaos,  and  the  unchecked  domination  of  devils ! 

In  such  a  state  of  things,  it  is  idle  to  talk  of  the  duty  of 
Society  toward  its  erring,  sinful  members  —  for  Society's 
first  duty  is  to  exist.  That  it  can  not  do  if  the  lazy  villain 
may  break  at  pleasure  into  the  frail  shanty  of  the  delving 
miner  and  carry  off  the  fruits  of  his  patient,  exhausting 
toil.  The  moment  it  is  established  that  this  is  a  safe 
operation,  the  vicious  and  unprincipled  will  hasten  to  ravage 
and  rob,  while  the  honest  and  industrious  must  inevitably 
cease  to  dig.  They  will  hasten  to  collect  their  valuables  in 
some  strong  position,  to  strengthen  it  with  fortifications  and 
defend  it  by  arms.  They  can  do  nothing  as  yet  with  the 
rascal  but  to  make  him  keep  his  distance,  or,  if  he  will  per 
sist  in  robbing,  to  deprive  him  of  the  ability  in  the  only  way 
yet  practicable,  by  depriving  him  of  life. 


DEATH  B¥  HUMAN  LAW.  303 

The  condition  of  the  Children  of  Israel  at  the  time  the 
Law  was    given   through    Moses   was    not   unlike  that   of 
California  in   1849.     Fugitives  and  wanderers  in  a  rugged 
wilderness,  surrounded  by  hostile  tribes,  and  soon  to  engage 
in  a  protracted,  exterminating  warfare  for  the  land   destined 
to  be  their  home  for  many  centuries — a  land  certain  to  be 
frequently  overrun  by  invading  hosts  and  to  be  harassed  by 
robber  hordes  from  the  adjacent  desert — it  would  have  been 
idle  for  a  p£ople  so  situated  to  talk  of  perpetual  imprison 
ment  or  anything  of  the  kind.     They  could  treat  offenders 
no    otherwise    than    with    severity.      Punishment    must   be 
prompt  or  it  could  not  be  inflicted,  for   no  prisons  existed, 
nor  could  any  be  constructed  which  could  be   reasonably 
expected  to  hold  prisoners  through  a  lifetime.     A  wise  Law 
giver  could  not  overlook   these  facts.     He  could  give   no 
other  laws  than  such  as  his  people's  condition  and  circum 
stances  required,  leaving  to  later  times  and  a  Diviner  guide 
the  announcement  of  the  Law  of  the  Universe  —  of  Eternity. 
t  The  infliction  of  Death  on  flagrant  offenders  is  not,  under 
such    circumstances,   necessarily    nor    naturally   an    act    of 
vengeance  any  more   than  the   farmer's   destruction  of  the 
weeds,  briars,  and  thistles  which  infest  his  fields  and  meadows 
is.     Man  must  live  —  Society  must  exist — the  Right  must 
maintain  its  ascendency  —  Cultivation  and  Food-producing 
must  have   scope,   though   robbers   should  die,   the  wrong 
should  suffer,  and  weeds  be  exterminated  in  consequence. 
Whatever  degree  of  severity  and  amount  of  destruction  may 
at  any  time  be  necessary  to  maintain  this  rightful  supremacy 
of  good  over  evil  stands  justified  by  the  constitution  of  the 
universe.     It  is  not  cruel  but  merciful  ;  not  wrathful  and 
vindictive  but  benignant  and  humane. 

The  moral  guilt  or  innocence  of  the  causer  of  evil  is  not 
material  to  the  issue.  Suppose  an  insane  man  were  now 
wandering  and  skulking  among  the  mountains  and  ravines 
of  interior  California,  so  possessed  by  the  spirit  of  destruc- 


304  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

tion,  of  slaughter,  that  he  missed  no  opportunity  to  kill  a 
human  being  whom  he  could  surprise  when  defenseless  and 
alone.  He  could  not  be  taken,  and,  if  taken,  could  not  be 
kept  secure.  He  has  killed  several  already,  and  every  week 
adds  to  the  number  of  his  victims.  Now  the  miners  would 
say,  '  True,  we  know  this  man  is  insane  and  morally  irre- 
4  sponsible — that  there  is  no  essential  guilt  in  his  homicidal 
'  frenzy ;  but  we  know  also  that  many  of  us  must  die  by 

*  his  hands  if  he  does  not  by  ours.     We  know  that  life  is 
'  unsafe  and  rendered  hideous  by  terror,  so  long  as  we  re- 

*  main  exposed  to  his  destroying  fury.     Therefore,  the  first 
'  man  among  us  who   gets  within  rifle-range  of  him  will 
1  shoot  him  down  as  if  he  were  a  wolf — which  he  would  do, 
and  be  perfectly  justified  in  doing — not  in  revenge  for  past 
but  in  deprecation  of  future  killing. 

So  with  regard  to  War.  If  a  farmer  were  to  shoot  a  boy 
whom  he  caught  robbing  his  orchard  or  fleeing  from  such 
robbery,  the  whole  country  would  cry  Shame,  and  the  law 
would  not  hold  the  slayer  guiltless.  But  if  that  youth  were 
an  avowed  burglar,  robbing  the  farmer's  dwelling  at  mid 
night  and  threatening  death  to  all  who  resisted,  shooting  him 
would  be  deemed  justified,  not  by  the  robber's  guilt  but  the 
farmer's  peril.  The  principle  is  the  same  with  regard  to 
nations  as  individuals.  A  nation  which  should  declare  war 
and  proceed  to  invade  another's  territory,  burn  its  towns 
and  slaughter  its  resisting  people,  because  of  past  depre 
dations  on  the  property  or  outrages  on  the  persons  of  some 
of  the  citizens  of  the  former  within  the  territory  of  the  latter, 
would  surely  be  guilty  of  a  wanton  and  inexcusable  resort  to 
bloodshed.  True,  if  these  depredations  and  outrages  were 
defiantly  proclaimed  and  gloried  in  by  the  offending  nation, 
they  might  afford  some  pretext  for  hostilities  —  or  rather,  the 
spirit  evinced  in  their  perpetration  might  be  esteemed 
dangerous  to  the  National  and  individual  security,  and  so 
demanding  resistance  with  a  view  to  repression.  To  embark 


DEATH  BY  HUMAN  LAW.  305 

in  wholesale  slaughter  simply  because  those  outrages  had 
been  committed  would  be  wanton  and  inexcusable  crime. 

But  a  nation  is  invaded  and  its  very  existence  threatened 
by  some  powerful  neighbor  —  as  that  of  Greece  was  by  Xerxes, 
that  of  France  by  the  Saracens,  that  of  Russia  by  Napoleon. 
It  is  the  plain  duty  of  its  people  to  resist  with  all  their  might, 
and  roll  back  the  tide  of  invasion  across  their  frontiers.  It 
is  better  for  Humanity  that  thousands  should  die  than  that 
millions  should  be  made  slaves,  and  their  children  after 
them.  But  there  is  necessarily  and  properly  no  vengeful 
feeling  on  their  part — no  wish  to  harm  an  individual  of  the 
invading  host — nothing  but  submission  to  the  stern,  sad 
necessity  of  sacrificing  the  invaders  or  themselves  to  the 
preservation  of  the  most  sacred  Rights  of  Man.  Since  the 
path  to  security  and  perpetuated  Freedom  lies  through  the 
center  of  that  invading,  advancing  host,  the  patriot  pursues 
and  clears  that  path,  though  in  so  doing  he  should  cleave 
an  invader's  heart  on  the  point  of  his  bayonet.  Yet  he  may 
very  probably  regard  the  individuals  composing  the  invading 
army  with  pity  rather  than  wrath — may  consider  that  they 
are,  nevertheless,  men  and  brethren,  whom  deceit  and  con 
straint  and  a  perverted  love  of  country  have  thus  armed 
and  impelled  on  their  errand  of  devastation  and  enslave 
ment.  He  must  resist  and  even  slay  them  so  long  as  no 
other  way  lies  open  to  him  of  defeating  the  baleful  purpose 
whereof  they  are  instruments  ;  but,  the  moment  that  peril 
is  averted,  by  their  capture  or  discomfiture,  that  moment  his 
acquiescence  in  this  sad  necessity  of  doing  them  physical 
harm  is  at  end.  To  kill  one  of  them  now  would  be  a  crime 
—  a  wanton  and  guilty  effusion  of  human  blood.  He  is 
henceforth  their  friend,  their  host,  their  good  Samaritan,  and 
in  due  time  dismisses  them  on  their  homeward  road,  heartily 
wishing  them  a  pleasant  journey  thither  and  a  long  and 
happy  sojourn  in  the  land  of  their  fathers. 
26* 


306  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

— And  now  to  killing  malefactors  by  sentence  of  law.  Is 
it  ever  justifiable  ?  I  answer  Yes,  provided  Society  can  in^ 
no  other  way  be  secured  against  a  repetition  of  the  culprit's 
offence.  In  committing  a  murder,  for  instance,  he  has 
proved  himself  capable  of  committing  more  murders  — 
perhaps  many.  The  possibility  of  a  thousand  murders  is 
developed  in  his  one  act  of  felonious  homicide.  Call  his 
moral  state  depravity,  insanity,  or  whatever  you  please,  he 
is  manifestly  a  ferocious,  dangerous  animal,  who  can  not 
safely  be  permitted  to  go  at  large.  Society  must  be  secured 
against  the  reasonable  probability  of  his  killing  others,  and, 
where  that  can  only  be  effected  by  taking  his  life,  his  life 
must  be  taken.  • 

—  But  suppose  him  to  be  in  New-England,  New- York  or_ 
Pennsylvania  —  arrested,  secured  and  convicted — Society's 
rebel,  outcast  and  prisoner  of  war — taken  with  arms  in  his 
hands.  Here  are  prison-cells  wherefrom  escape  is  impos 
sible  ;  and  if  there  be  any  fear  of  his  assaulting  his  keeper 
or  others,  that  may  be  most  effectively  prevented.  Is  it  ex 
pedient  or  salutary  to  crush  the  life  out  of  this  helpless,  ab 
ject,  pitiable  wretch? 

I  for  one  think  it  decidedly  is  not — that  it  is  a  sorrowful 
mistake  and  barbarity  to  do  any  such  thing.  In  saying  this, 
I  do  not  assume  to  decide  whether  Hanging  or  Imprisonment 
for  Life  is  the  severer  penalty.  I  should  wish  to  understand 
clearly  the  moral  state  of  the  prisoner  before  I  attempted  to 
guess;  and,  even  then,  I  know  too  little  of  the  scenes  of 
untried  being  which  lie  next  beyond  the  confines  of  this  mor 
tal  existence  to  say  whether  it  were  better  for  any  peni 
tent  or  hardened  culprit  to  be  hung  next  month  or  left 
in  prison  to  die  a  natural  death.  What  is  best  for  that 
culprit  I  leave  to  God,  who  knows  when  is  the  fit  time  for 
him  to  die.  My  concern  is  with  Society  — the  moral  jt 
teaches,  the  conduct  it  tacitly  enjoins.  And  I  feel  that  the 


DEATH  BY  HUMAN  LAW.  307 

choking  to  death  of  this  culprit  works  harm,  in  these  respects, 
namely : 

1.  It  teaches  and  sanctions  Revenge.     There  is  a  natural 
inclination  in  man  to  return  injury  for  injury,  evil  for  evil. 
It  is  the  exciting  cause   of  many  murders  as  well   as  less 
flagrant   crimes.     It  stands  in  no  need  of  stimulation  —  its 
prompt  repression  at  all  times  is  one  of  the  chief  trials  even 
of  good  men.     But  A.  B.  has  committed  a  murder,  is  con 
victed  of  and  finally  hung  for  it.     Bill,  Dick  and  Jim,  three 
apprentices  of  ordinary  understanding  and  attainments,  beg 
away  or  run  away  to  witness  the   hanging.     Ask  either  of 
them,  '  What  is  this  man  hung  for  ?'    and  the  prompt,  cor 
rect   answer  will   be,  *  Because  he  killed  C.  D.' — not  'To 
prevent  his  killing  others,'  nor  yet  '  To  prevent  others  from 
killing.'     Well  :    the    three    enjoy    the   spectacle   and  turn 
away  satisfied.     On  their  way  home,  a  scuffle  is  commenced 
in  fun,  but  gradually  changes  to  a  fight,  wherein  one  finds 
himself  down  with  two  holding  and  beating  him.      Though 
sorely  exasperated  and  severely  suffering,  he  can  not  throw 
them  off,  but  he  can  reach  with  one  hand  the   knife  in  his 
vest  pocket.     Do   you  fancy  he  will  be  more  or  less  likely 
to  use  it  because  of  that  moral  spectacle  which  Society  has 
just  proffered  for  his  delectation  and  improvement  ?     You 
may  say  Less,  if  you  can,  but  I  say  More  !    many  times 
more  !     You  may  preach  to  him  that  Revenge  is  right  for 
Society  but  wrong  for  him   till  your  head  is  gray,  and  he 
perhaps  may  listen  to  you  —  but  not  till  after  he  has  opened 
his  knife  and  made  a  lunge  with  it. 

2.  It  tends  to  weaken  and  destroy  the  natural  horror  of 
bloodshed.     Man  has  a  natural  horror  of  taking  the  life  of 
his  fellow  man.     His  instincts  revolt  at  it  —  his  conscience 
condemns  it — his  frame  shudders  at  the  thought  of  it.    But 
let  him  see  first  one   and   then  another  strung  up  between 
heaven  and  earth  and  choked  to  death,  with  due  formalities 
of  Law    and  solemnities    of  Religion — the  slayer  not  ac- 


308  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

counted  an  evil-doer  but  an  executor  of  the  State's  just 
decree,  a  pillar  of  the  Social  edifice  —  and  his  horror  of 
bloodshed  per  se  sensibly  and  rapidly  oozes  away,  and  he 
comes  to  look  at  killing  men  as  quite  the  thing  provided 
there  be  adequate  reason  for  it.  But  what  reason?  and 
whose  ?  The  law  slays  the  slayer  ;  but  in  his  sight  the 
corrupter  or  calumniator  of  his  wife  or  sister,  the  traducer 
of  his  character,  the  fraudulent  bankrupt  who  has  involved 
and  ruined  his  friend,  is  every  whit  as  great  a  villain  as  the 
man-slayer,  and  deserving  of  as  severe  a  punishment.  Yet 
the  Law  makes  no  provision  for  such  punishment — hardly 
for  any  punishment  at  all  —  and  what  shall  he  do?  He 
can  not  consent  that  the  guilty  go  '  unwhipt  of  justice,'  so  he 
takes  his  rifle  and  deals  out  full  measure  of  it.  He  is  but 
doing  as  Society  has  taught  him  by  example.  War,  duel-, 
ing,  bloody  affrays,  &c.,  find  their  nourishment  and  support 
in  the  Gallows. 

3.  It  facilitates  and  often  insures  the  escape  of  the  guilty 
from  any  punishment  by  human  law.  —  Jurors  (whether  for 
or  against  Capital  Punishment)  dread  to  convict  where  the 
crime  is  Death.  Human  judgment  is  fallible  ;  human  testi 
mony  may  mislead.  Witnesses  often  lie  —  sometimes  con 
spire  to  lie  plausibly  and  effectively.  Circumstances  often 
strongly  point  to  a  conclusion  which  is  after  all  a  false  one. 
The  real  murderers  sometimes  conspire  to  fasten  suspicion 
on  some  innocent  person,  and  so  arrange  the  circumstances 
that  he  can  hardly  escape  their  toils.  Sometimes  they  ap 
pear  in  court  as  witnesses  against  him,  and  swear  the  crime 
directly  upon  him.  A  single  legal  work  contains  a  list  of 
one  hundred  cases  in  which  men  were  hung  for  crimes  which 
they  were  afterward  proved  entirely  innocent  of.  And  for 
every  such  case  there  have  doubtless  been  many  wherein 
juries,  unwilling  to  take  life  where  there  was  a  possibility  of 
innocence,  have  given  the  prisoner  the  benefit  of  a  very 
faint  doubt  and  acquitted  him.  Had  the  penalty  been  Im- 


DEATH  BY  HUMAN  LAW.  309 

prisonment,  they  would  have  convicted,  notwithstanding  the 
bare  possibility  of  his  innocence,  since  any  future  devel 
opments  in  his  favor,  through  the  retraction  of  witnesses, 
the  clearing  up  of  circumstances,  or  the  confession  of  the 
actual  culprit,  would  at  once  lead  to  his  liberation  and  to  an 
earnest  effort  by  the  community  to  repay  him  for  his  un 
merited  ignominy  and  suffering.  But  choke  the  prisoner 
to  death,  and  any  development  in  his  favor  is  thenceforth 
too  late.  Next  year  may  prove  him  innocent  beyond  cavil 
or  doubt ;  but  of  what  avail  is  that  to  the  victim  over  whose 
grave  the  young  grass  is  growing  ?  And  thus,  through  the 
inexorable  character  of  the  Death-Penalty,  hundreds  of  the 
innocent  suffer  an  undeserved  and  ignominious  death,  while 
tens  of  thousands  of  the  guilty  escape  any  punishment  by 
human  law. 

4.  It  excites  a  pernicious  sympathy  for  the  convict.  —  We 
ought  ever  to  be  merciful  toward  the  sinful  and  guilty, 
remembering  our  own  misdeeds  and  imperfections.  We 
ought  to  regard  with  a  benignant  compassion  those  whom 
Crime  has  doomed  to  suffer.  But  the  criminal  is  not  a 
hero,  nor  a  martyr,  and  should  not  be  made  to  resemble  one. 
A  crowd  of  ten  to  fifty  thousand  persons,  witnessing  the 
infliction  of  the  law's  just  penalty  on  an  offender,  and  half 
of  them  sobbing  and  crying  from  sympathy  for  his  fate,  is 
not  a  wholesome  spectacle  —  far  otherwise.  The  impression 
it  makes  is  not  that  of  the  majesty  and  Divine  benignity  of 
Law  —  the  sovereignty  and  beneficence  of  Justice.  Thou 
sands  are  hoping,  praying,  entreating  that  a  pardon  may  yet 
come  —  some  will  accuse  the  Executive  of  cruelty  and  hard 
ness  of  heart  in  withholding  it.  While  this  furnace  of  sighs 
is  at  red  heat,  this  tempest  of  sobs  in  full  career,  the  cul 
prit  is  swung  off — a  few  faint;  many  shudder ;  more  feel 
an  acute  shock  of  pain  ;  while  the  great  mass  adjourn  to 
take  a  general  drink,  some  of  them  swearing  that  this  hang 
ing  was  a  great  shame  —  that  the  man  did  not  really  deserve 


310  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

it.     Do  you  fancy  the  greater  number  have  imbibed  and  will 
profit  by  the  intended  lesson  ? 

—  But  I  do  not  care  to  pile  argument  on  argument,  con 
sideration  on  consideration,  in  opposition  to  the  expediency, 
in  this  day  and  section,  of  putting  men  to  death  in  cold 
blood  by  human  law.  It  seems  to  me  a  most  pernicious 
and  brutalizing  practice.  Indeed,  the  recent  enactments  of 
our  own,  with  most  if  not  all  of  the  Free  States,  whereby 
Executions  are  henceforth  to  take  place  in  private,  or  in 
the  presence  of  a  few  select  witnesses  only,  seem  clearly  to 
admit  the  fact.  They  certainly  imply  that  Executions  are 
of  no  use  as  examples  —  that  they  rather  tend  to  make 
criminals  than  to  reform  those  already  depraved.  When  I 
see  any  business  or  vocation  sneaking  and  skulking  in  dark 
lanes  and  little  by-streets  which  elude  observation,  I  conclude 
that  those  who  follow  such  business  feel  at  least  doubtful  of 
its  utility  and  beneficence.  They  may  argue  that  it  is  'a 
necessary  evil,'  but  they  can  hardly  put  faith  in  their  own 
logic.  When  I  see  the  bright  array  of  many-colored  liquor- 
bottles,  which  formerly  filled  flauntingly  the  post  of  honor 
in  every  tip-top  hotel,  now  hustled  away  into  some  side- 
room,  and  finally  down  into  a  dark  basement,  out  of  the 
sight  and  knowledge  of  all  but  those  who  especially  seek 
them,  I  say  exultingly,  '  Good  for  so  much !  one  more 
'  hoist,  and  they  will  be — where  they  should  be  ^— out  of  sight 
4  and  reach  altogether :' — so,  when  I  see  the  Gallows,  once 
the  denizen  of  some  swelling  eminence,  the  cynosure  of  ten 
thousand  eyes,  '  the  observed  of  all  observers,'  skulking  and 
hiding  itself  from  public  view  in  jail-yards,  shutting  itself  up 
in  prisons,  I  say,  '  You  have  taken  the  right  road !  Go 
1  ahead !  One  more  drive,  and  your  detested,  rickety  frame 
'  is  out  of  the  sight  of  civilized  man  for  ever !' 


LAND  REFORM.  311 


LAND  REFORM. 

The  Rights  of  Man  —  his  natural,  unchanging,  inalienable 
Rights  as  Man  —  have  fitly  become,  in  our  day,  the  theme 
of  general  and  earnest  discussion.  We  find  little  of  this  in 
the  world's  early  ages  and  their  enduring  monuments  —  in 
Homer,  or  Plato,  or  Cicero — in  Magna  Charta,  or  the  Con 
stitutions,  so  called,  of  ancient  Republics,  or  more  modern 
Limited  Monarchies.  Only  since  Paine  met  The  Crisis  of 
our  Revolutionary  struggle  with  those  brief,  terse,  vigorous 
essays  wnich  brought  the  whole  philosophy  of  Government 
into  the  strong,  clear  sunlight  of  Common  Sense  —  only 
since  Jefferson  condensed  the  truths  so  enunciated  into  the 
Declaration  of  our  Independence  —  have  the  Rights  of  Man 
been  prominently  considered  and  discussed.  And,  wrhen 
Jefferson  and  the  Continental  Congress  proclaimed,  in  tones 
to  which  the  world,  however  unwilling,  has  been  compelled 
to  listen,  that  '  all  men  are  created  equal,'  and  that  among 
the  '  inalienable  rights'  with  which  their  Creator  has  en 
dowed  them  are  those  of  *  Life,  Liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of 
Happiness,'  they  uttered  truths  of  whose  fullest  import  even 
they  were  not  clearly  conscious,  and  whose  ultimate  influ 
ences  on  Human  well-being  and  destiny  no  man  can  even 
yet  conceive. 

Let  us  consider  their  bearings  on  the  newly  agitated  Land 
Question  —  on  the  Right  of  Man  to  the  Soil.  The  Earth's 
surface  undoubtedly  contains  good  arable  land  enough  to 
give  to  every  family  in  existence  a  farm  of  ample  dimensions, 
even  though  all  the  unhealthful  or  inhospitable  portions  of 
the  globe  were  left  utterly  uninhabited.  But  of  the  One 
Thousand  Millions  of  human  beings  wrho  are  supposed  to 
be  in  existence,  what  proportion  practically  enjoy  the  Right 


312  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

to  any  Soil  except  that  with  which  their  lifeless  bodies  are 
finally  covered?  What  proportion  are  at  liberty  to  obey 
God's  command,  '  Six  days  shalt  thou  labor,'  save  in  the 
contingency  that  some  one  else  knows  that  he  can  buy  that 
labor  and  sell  its  product  on  such  terms  that  he  may  realize 
a  pecuniary  profit  on  the  speculation  ? 

Now  these  deductions  can  hardly  seem  far-fetched :  Man, 
having  a  conceded  right  to  live,  has  a  necessary  right  also  to 
a  reasonable  share  of  those  means  of  subsistence  which  God 
has  provided  for  and  made  virtually  necessary  to  the  whole 
human  family :  Having  a  right  to  Liberty,  he  must  have 
consequently  the  right  to  go  somewhere  on  earth  and  do  what 
is  essential  to  his  continued  existence,  not  by  the  purchased 
permission  of  some  other  man,  but  by  virtue  of  his  manhood  : 
Having  the  right  to  pursue  his  own  happiness  by  any  means 
not  inconsistent  with  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  others,  he 
has  the  right  to  do  so  somewhere,  and  to  be  protected  and 
justified  in  so  doing.  In  short,  the  terrestrial  Man,  pos 
sessing  the  well-known  properties  of  matter  as  well  as  of 
spirit,  can  only  in  truth  enjoy  the  rights  of  '  Life,  Liberty, 
and  the  pursuit  of  Happiness,'  by  being  guarantied  some 
place  in  which  to  enjoy  them.  He  who  has  no  clear,  inhe 
rent  right  to  live  somewhere,  has  no  right  to  live  at  all. 

But  look  at  the  question  from  the  side  of  Labor :  God 
expressly  commands  men  to  labor  six  days  of  every  seven, 
and  has  made  obedience  to  this  command  a  vital  condition 
of  healthful  and  comfortable  existence.  (Alas  that  one  man 
should  obey  and  another  enjoy  the  reward  of  his  obedience  !) 
Here,  in  a  State  or  County,  are  fifty  thousand  persons  able 
and  willing  to  labor,  with  an  abundance  of  arable  land  to 
employ  them  all  constantly  and  reward  them  generously : 
But  the  land  mainly  belongs  to  a  few  dozens  or  hundreds 
of  this  population,  (or,  still  worse,  of  absentees,)  who  vir 
tually  say  to  the  twenty  or  thirty  thousand  would-be  laborers 
who  own  no  land,  '  You  can  only  be  allowed  to  work  here 


LAND  REFORM.  313 

s  on  condition  that  you  will  allow  us  [in  the  shape  of  rents, 
'  price  of  land,  or  depressed  wages]  one-half  to  three-fourths 
*  of  the  entire  product  of  your  toil.'  Is  not  here  a  heavy 
tax  levied  by  man  upon  obedience  to  the  laws  of  Nature  and 
of  God  ?  Who  does  not  see  that  Labor  is  discouraged  and 
Idleness  immensely  increased  by  this  exaction,  and  the 
power  vested  in  the  few  to  impose  it? 

iret  the  most  appalling  feature  of  our  present  system  of 
Landholding  is  the  manifest  tendency  of  its  evils  to  become 
more  and  more  aggravated  and  intolerable  —  nay,  the  inevi 
table  necessity  that  they  should  become  so,  if  the  system 
itself  be  endured.  If  the  population  of  the  British  Isles 
were  this  day  no  more  dense  than  that  of  Indiana  or  Russia, 
the  average  recompense  of  its  labor  would  doubtless  be  in 
creased,  the  condition  of  its  laboring  people  greatly  improved. 
The  gradual  increase  of  population  therein  from  three  or  four 
millions  to  thirty  or  forty,  has,  in  connection  with  the  mo 
nopoly  of  the  Soil  by  a  class  who  are  not  its  cultivators, 
gradually  carried  up  the  market  value  and  the  yearly  rental 
of  arable  land  to  prices  which  enable  the  land-owning  few 
to  riot  in  unparalleled  luxury,  and  doom  the  landless  many 
to  toil  evermore  for  the  barest  necessaries  of  life,  while  hun 
dreds  of  thousands  vainly  beg  from  door  to  door  an  oppor 
tunity  to  earn  the  blackest  bread  by  the  most  repulsive  and 
meagerly  recompensed  drudgery.  Like  causes  will  produce 
like  effects  here  and  elsewhere.  It  is  not  the  fact  that  the 
landlords  are  few  that  is  so  baneful ;  if  they  were  ten  times 
as  many,  the  evil  would  hardly  be  mitigated.  So  long  as 
the  millions,  whom  God  has  doomed  in  the  sweat  of  their 
faces  to  eat  bread,  shall  be  constrained  to  solicit  of  others 
the  privilege  of  so  doing,  and  to  propitiate  the  land-owning 
class  by  such  a  share  of  their  products  as  Cupidity  may 
exact  and  Necessity  must  concede,  the  increase  of  popula 
tion  will  be  paralleled  by  the  depression  of  labor  and  the 
laborer.  Other  influence.0  mnv  come  in  to  modify  or  roun- 
•27 


314  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

teract  this — new  inventions  which  vastly  increase  the  effi 
ciency  of  labor ;  improved  processes,  more  scientific  culture, 
&c.,  may  do  something  to  mitigate  the  ills  of  poverty;  but 
the  master  evil,  a  monopoly  of  land  by  those  who  do  not  use 
it,  tends  ever  to  sink  the  landless  multitude  into  a  state  of 
more  abject  dependence,  while  it  restricts  the  demand  for 
and  the  price  of  their  sole  commodity  and  resource. 

Suppose  the  usage  and  the  law  were  so  changed  that  no 
man  were  permitted,  in  this  boasted  land  of  equal  rights,  to 
hold  as  his  own  more  than  half  a  square  mile  of  arable  soil 
(which  is  enough  for  fifty  men  to  cultivate)  so  long  as  a 
single  person  needing  land  in  the  community  should  remain 
destitute  of  any,  what  a  mighty  and  beneficent  transformation 
would  be  effected  in  the  reward  of  labor  and  the  condition 
of  the  laboring  class !  Then,  instead  of  a  constant  increase 
in  the  proportion  of  landless  seekers  for  something  to  do, 
resulting  in  a  constant  jostling  and  underbidding  among 
laborers  wanting  employment,  we  should  see  a  continual 
division  and  subdivision  of  large  estates,  with  a  steady  in 
crease  in  the  number  and  proportion  of  small  proprietors, 
each  his  own  employer  and  his  own  laborer,  whereby  the 
mass  of  landless  seekers  for  work  as  hirelings  or  tenants 
would  be  rapidly  diminished.  It  is  not  proposed  to  disturb 
any  individual  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  his  possessions,  but 
to  make  the  operation  of  the  proposed  reform  wholly  pros 
pective,  so  that,  while  each  proprietor  or  landlord,  at  the 
enactment  of  the  Limitation,  should  retain  his  estates  until 
death,  all  future  aggregation  shall  be  sternly  forbidden, 
and  the  principle  applied  to  each  existing  estate  on  the  de 
cease  of  its  present  owner.  Even  the  right  to  transmit  prop 
erty  to  heirs  or  devisees  would  not  be  interfered  with,  except 
so  far  as  to  say,  «  Man  of  Millions  !  bequeath  your  wealth  as 
'  you  choose  ;  but  that  part  of  it  which  consists  of  the  Soil 

*  can  only  be  inherited  and  held  by  any  one  to  the  extent  of 

*  the  limit  prescribed  by  law.     If  you  see  fit  to  devise  more 


LAND  REFORM.  315 

4  than  this  to  any  one  person,  he  may  select  from  your  be- 
*  quest,  and  any  he  may  previously  own,  so  much  as  the  law 
'  allows  him  to  retain,  and  sell  the  rest :  or,  if  he  does  not  do 
1  this  within  a  year,  the  State  will  do  it  for  him,  holding  the 
1  proceeds  of  the  portion  sold  subject  to  his  order.' 

That  this  will  seem  arbitrary  and  impracticable  to  many 
is  a  matter  of  course,  and  the  hardship  of  not  allowing  a  man 
to  do  as  he  likes  with  his  own  will  doubtless  be  dilated  on  in 
tones  of  moving  eloquence.  But  the  principle  here  involved 
has  already  been  asserted  in  our  Usury  Laws  and  many 
others  which  tend  to  fetter  or  check  the  spirit  of  personal 
acquisition  when  it  is  found  encroaching  upon  the  domain  of 
public  good.  A  man  may  not  '  do  as  he  likes  with  his  own' 
money,  nor  even  with  his  own  house  —  he  is  forbidden  to 
burn  the  latter,  though  built  with  his  own  hands,  and  en 
tirely  unconnected  with  any  other.  Many  if  not  most  States 
already  limit  the  area  of  land  which  may  be  acquired  and 
held  by  a  Bank  or  Moneyed  Corporation  ;  probably  none 
allow  Aliens  freely  to  acquire  and  enjoy  it.  Coeval  with 
the  great  Hebrew  Lawgiver  and  very  thoroughly  enforced 
by  him,  reappearing  in  the  noblest  periods  of  Roman  repub 
licanism,  but  gradually  sapped  and  overthrown  by  an  ever- 
grasping  Aristocracy,  the  principle  of  Land  Limitation  has 
received  the  approval  of  some  of  the  most  gifted  and  philan 
thropic  of  ancient  or  modern  times.  Its  triumphant  estab 
lishment,  wherever  Popular  Education  and  Universal  Suf 
frage  shall  have  preceded  it,  is  well  nigh  inevitable. 

A  ready  objection  of  those  who  have  scarcely  thought  on 
the  subject  imports  that  any  attempt  to  remedy  by  law  the 
inequalities  of  fortune  in  the  matter  of  Land  involves  the 
principle  of  an  arbitrary  distribution  of  Property  equally  to 
everybody.  But  this  is  an  egregious  error.  What  Nature 
indicates  and  Justice  requires  is  Equal  Opportunities  to  all. 
To  maintain  that  he  who  has  idly  frolicked  through  the  sum 
mer  has  an  equal  right  to  food  and  clothing  in  the  winter  with 


316  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

his  frugal  neighbor,  who  by  patient  toil  has  produced  five 
hundred  bushels  of  grain  and  some  hundreds  of  pounds  of 
flax  and  wool,  is  to  contravene  the  Apostle's  precept,  '  He 
that  will  not  work  shall  not  eat.'  But  Land  Limitation  con 
templates  a  gentle  and  gradual  restoration  of  that  equal  right 
to  the  Soil  which  was  ordained  by  the  Creator  in  the  consti 
tution  of  the  globe.  Instead  of  giving  to  the  idle  the  products 
of  other  men's  labor,  it  is  intended  to  countervail  that  dis 
pensation  of  human  policy  whereby  millions  labor  ceaselessly 
for  scanty  and  bitter  bread  while  thousands  revel  sump 
tuously  on  the  lion's  share  of  the  products  of  the  toil  so 
meagerly  recompensed.  Not  to  transfer  the  toiler's  earnings 
to  the  idler,  but  to  prevent  such  transfer,  is  the  object  of 
Land  Reform. 

But  if  it  be  possible  to  resist  the  force  of  the  considera 
tions  which  dictate  the  enactment  of  laws  looking  to  a  more 
equal  apportionment  of  the  Soil  now  private  property,  how 
can  it  be  to  oppose  with  even  plausibility  the  application  of 
the  Land  Reform  principles  to  our  vast  and  bounteous  Na 
tional  Domain?  Here  we  have  a  public  patrimony  equal  to 
the  habitable  portion  of  Europe,  and  calculated  to  support 
in  generous  abundance  a  population  of  Two  Hundred  Mil 
lions  of  People.  Under  our  present  system,  (the  best  the 
world  has  known  since  the  overthrow  of  the  Hebrew  Com 
monwealth,)  this  Domain  is  becoming  private  property  at  the 
rate  of  some  Three  to  Five  Millions  of  Acres  per  annum. 
Making  a  reasonable  allowance  for  the  steadily  increasing 
demand,  arising  from  the  enlargement  of  our  population 
and  the  swelling  tide  of  immigration,  we  may  safely  calcu 
late  that  in  fifty  years  our  Public  Lands  will  have  been 
diminished  by^t  least  Three  Hundred  Millions  of  their  very 
choicest  portion,  namely,  that  bordering  or  approaching  the 
navigable  waters  of  the  Mississippi,  the  Columbia,  and  their 
tributaries.  The  remainder  must  be  far  inferior  in  soil  and 
natural  advantages  generally.  What  then  will  be  the  con- 


LAND  REFORM.  317 

dition  and  prospects  of  the  landless  millions  among  our  peo 
ple,  pressed  upon  by  European  competition  and  European 
immigration  on  the  one  side,  and  deprived  in  great  measure 
of  the  present  safety-valve  of  Western  migration  on  the 
other'?  —  But  look  forward  another  half-century,  and  judi;o 
what  will  then  be  the  state  of  *  the  disinherited  classes,' 
should  no  change  be  made  meantime  in  our  land-laws. 
Look  to  Saxony,  to  Belgium,  to  Ireland,  for  a  parallel. 

National  Reform  is  the  broad  and  sure  basis  whereon  all 
other  Reforms  may  be  safely  erected.  A  single  law  of  Con 
gress,  proffering  to  each  landless  citizen  a  patch  of  the  Pub 
lic  Domain  —  small  but  sufficient,  when  faithfully  cultivated, 
for  the  sustenance  of  his  family,  and  forbidding  farther  sales 
of  the  Public  Lands  except  in  limited  quantities  to  actual 
settlers,  with  a  suitable  proviso  against  future  aggregation, 
would  promote  immensely  the  independence,  enlightenment, 
morality,  industry,  and  comfort  of  our  entire  laboring  popula 
tion  evermore.  It  would  improve  the  condition  of  the  labor 
ing  class  in  our  cities,  not  by  drawing  away  all  to  the  new 
lands  of  the  West,  but  by  so  enlarging  the  stream  of  emigra 
tion  thither  as  to  diminish  the  pressure  of  competition  in  the 
Labor  market  throughout  the  country,  and  enable  the  hire 
ling  to  make  terms  with  his  employer  as  to  the  duration  of 
his  daily  toil  and  the  amount  of  his  recompense.  It  would 
render  settlements  more  compact  and  continuous,  insuring 
a  more  rapid  establishment  of  Roads,  of  Schools,  of  Divine 
worship,  &c.  It  would  enlarge  immensely  the  demand  for 
the  products  of  our  manufactories  and  workshops,  and  thus 
aid  the  laborers  remaining  in  the  Old  States  by  increasing 
the  demand  for  their  labor  as  well  as  diminishing  the  com 
petition  to  supply  it.  It  would  hardly  be  possible  to  exag 
gerate  the  ultimate  benefits  of  the  proposed  Reform,  and 
the  day  of  its  triumph  should  be  hailed  by  the  poor  and 
lowly  as  the  birthday  of  their  independence,  as  the  Fourth 
of  July  is  celebrated  as  that  of  the  Nation. 

97* 


318  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 


THE  RIGHT  TO  LABOR.* 

"  IN  the  beginning  GOD  created  the  heaven  and  the 
earth." 

The  earth,  the  air,  the  waters,  the  sunshine,  with  their 
natural  products,  were  divinely  intended  and  appointed  for 
the  use  and  sustenance  of  Man  (Gen.  i.  26,  28J[ — not  for  a 
part  only,  but  for  the  whole  Human  Family. 

Civilized  Society,  as  it  exists  in  our  day,  has  divested  the 
larger  portion  of  mankind  of  the  unimpeded,  unpurchased 
enjoyment  of  their  natural  rights.  That  larger  portion  may 
be  perishing  with  cold,  yet  have  no  legally  recognized  right 
to  a  stick  of  decaying  fuel  in  the  most  unfrequented  morass, 
or  maybe  famishing,  yet  have  no  legal  right  to  pluck  and  eat 
the  bitterest  acorn  in  the  depths  of  the  remotest  wilderness. 
The  defeasance  or  confiscation  of  Man's  natural  right  to  use_ 
any  portion  of  the  Earth's  surface  not  actually  in  use  by 
another,  is  an  important  fact,  to  be  kept  in  view  in  every 
consideration  of  the  duty  of  the  affluent  and  comfortable  to 
the  poor  and  unfortunate. 

It  is  not  essential  in  this  place  to  determine  that  the 
divestment  of  the  larger  number  of  any  recognized  right  to 
the  Soil  and  its  Products,  save  by  the  purchased  permission 
of  others,  was  or  was  not  politic  and  necessary.  All  who 
reflect  must  certainly  admit  that  many  of  the  grants  of  land 
by  hundreds  of  square  miles  to  this  or  that  favorite  of  the 
power  which  assumed  to  make  them  were  made  thoughtlessly 
or  recklessly,  and  would  not  have  been  so  large  or  so  un 
accompanied  with  stipulations  in  behalf  of  the  future  occu 
pants  and  cultivators,  if  a  reasonable  foresight  and  a  decent 
regard  for  the  general  good  had  been  cherished  and  evinced 

*  From  a  discussion  on  Socialism,  with  H.  J.  Raymond. 


THE  RIGHT  TO  LABOR.  319 

by  the  granting  power.  Suffice  it  here,  however,  that  the 
granting  of  the  Soil  —  of  the  State  of  New  York,  for  example 
—  by  the  supreme  authority  representing  the  whole  to  a  minor 
portion  of  the  whole  is  a  "  fixed  fact."  By  a  Law  of  Nature, 
every  person  horn  in  the  State  of  New  York  had  (unless  for 
feited  by  crime)  a  perfect  right  to  be  here,  and  to  his  equal 
share  of  the  Soil,  the  woods,  the  waters,  and  all  the  natural 
products  thereof.  By  the  law  of  Society,  all  but  the  posses 
sors  of  title-deeds  exist  here  only  by  the  purchased  permission 
of  the  land-owning  class,  and  were  intruders  and  trespassers 
on  the  soil  of  their  nativity  without  that  permission.  By  law, 
the  landless  have  no  inherent  right  to  stand  on  a  single  square 
foot  of  the  State  of  New-York  except  in  the  highways. 

The  only  solid  ground  on  which  this  surrender  of  the 
original  property  of  the  whole  to  a  minor  portion  can  be 
justified  is  that  of  PUBLIC  GOOD  —  the  good,  not  of  a  part, 
buf  of  the  whole.  The  people  of  a  past  generation,  through 
their  rulers,  claimed  and  exercised  the  right  of  divesting,  not 
themselves  merely,  but  the  majority  of  all  future  generations, 
of  their  original  and  inherent  right  to  possess  and  cultivate 
any  unimproved  portion  of  the  soil  of  our  State  for  their  own 
sustenance  and  benefit.  To  render  this  assumption  of  power 
valid  to  the  fearful  extent  to  which  it  was  exercised,  it  is 
essential  that  it  be  demonstrated  that  the  good  of  the  whole 
wras  promoted  by  such  exercise. 

Is  this  rationally  demonstrable  now  ?  Can  the  widow, 
whose  children  pine  and  shiver  in  some  bleak,  miserable 
garret,  on  the  fifteen  or  twenty  cents,  which  is  all  she  can 
earn  by  unremitted  toil,  be  made  to  realize  that  she  and  her 
babes  are  benefited  by  or  in  consequence  of  the  granting  to 
a  part  an  exclusive  right  to  use  the  earth  and  enjoy  its  fruits  ? 
Can  the  poor  man  who  day  after  day  paces  the  streets  of  a 
city  in  search  of  any  employment  at  any  price,  (as  thousands 
are  now  doing  here,)  be  made  to  realize  it  on  his  part  ?  _Are 
there  not  thousands  on  thousands  —  natives  of  our  State  who 


320  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

never  wilfully  violated  her  laws  —  who  are  to-day  far  worse 
off  than  they  would  have  been  if  Nature's  rule  of  allowing 
no  man  to  appropriate  to  himself  any  more  of  the  earth  than 
he  can  cultivate  and  improve  had  been  recognized  and 
respected  by  Society  ?  These  questions  admit  of  but  one 
answer.  And  one  inevitable  consequence  of  the  prevailing 
system  is  that,  as  Population  increases  and  Arts  are  per 
fected,  the  income  of  the  wealthy  owner  of  land  increases 
while  the  recompense  of  the  hired  or  leasehold  cultivator  is 
steadily  diminishing.  The  labor  of  Great  Britain  is  twice  as 
effective  now  as  it  was  a  century  ago,  but  the  laborer  is 
worse  paid,  fed,  and  lodged  than  he  then  was,  while  the 
incomes  of  the  landlord  class  have  been  enormously  in 
creased.  The  same  fundamental  causes  exist  here,  and  tend 
to  the  same  results.  They  have  been  modified,  thus  far,  by 
the  existence,  within  or  near  our  State,  of  large  tracts  of  un 
improved  land,  which  the  owners  were  anxious  to  improve 
or  dispose  of  on  almost  any  terms.  These  are  growing 
scarcer  and  more  remote  ;  they  form  no  part  of  the  system 
we  are  considering,  but  something  which  exists  in  opposition 
to  it,  which  modifies  it,  but  is  absolutely  sure  to  be  ultimately 
absorbed  and  conquered  by  it.  The  notorious  fact  that  they 
do  serve  to  mitigate  the  exactions  to  which  the  landless 
mass,  even  in  our  long  and  densely  settled  towns  and  cities, 
are  subject,  serves  to  show  that  the  condition  of  the  great 
mass  must  inevitably  be  far  worse  than  at  present  when  the 
natural  consummation  of  land- selling  is  reached,  and  all  the 
soil  of  the  Union  has  become  the  property  of  a  minor  part 
of  the  People  of  the  Union. 

The  past  can  not  be  recalled.  What  has  been  rightfully 
(however  mistakenly)  done  by  the  authorized  agents  of  the 
State  or  Nation,  can  only  be  retracted  upon  urgent  public 
necessity,  and  upon  due  satisfaction  to  all  whose  private 
rights  are  thereby  invaded.  But  those  who  have  been 
divested  of  an  important,  a  vital  natural  right,  are  also 


THE  RIGHT  TO  LABOR.  321 

entitled  to  compensation.  THE  RIGHT  TO  LABOR,  secured 
to  them  in  the  creation  of  the  earth,  taken  away  in  the_ 
granting  of  the  Soil  to  a  minor  portion  of  them,  must  be  re 
stored.  Labor,  essential  to  all,  is  the  inexorable  condition 
of  the  honest,  independent  subsistence  of  the  Poor.  It  must 
be  fully  guarantied  to  all,  so  that  each  may  know  that  he 
can  never  starve  nor  be  forced  to  beg  while  able  and  willing 
to  work.  Our  public  provision  for  Pauperism  is  but  a 
halting  and  wretched  substitute  for  this.  Society  exercises 
no  paternal  guardianship  over  the  poor  man  until  he  has  sur 
rendered  to  despair.  He  may  spend  a  whole  year  and  his 
little  all  in  vainly  seeking  employment,  and  all  this  time 
Society  does  nothing,  cares  nothing  for  him ;  but  when  his 
last  dollar  is  exhausted,  and  his  capacities  very  probably 
prostrated  by  the  intoxicating  draughts  to  which  he  is  driven 
to  escape  the  horrors  of  reflection,  then  he  becomes  a  subject 
of  public  charity,  and  is  often  maintained  in  idleness  for  the 
rest  of  his  days  at  a  cost  of  thousands,  when  a  few  dollars' 
worth  of  foresight  and  timely  aid  might  have  preserved  him 
from  this  fate,  and  in  a  position  of  independent  usefulness  for 
his  whole  after-life. 

But  the  Right  to  Labor  —  that  is,  to  constant  Employ 
ment  with  a  just  and  full  Recompense  —  can  not  be  guaran 
tied  to  all  without  a  radical  change  in  our  Social  Economy. 
I,  for  one,  am  very  willing,  nay,  most  anxious,  to  do  my  full 
share  toward  securing  to  every  man,  woman,  and  child,  full 
employment  and  a  just  recompense  for  all  time  to  come.  I 
feel  sure  this  can  be  accomplished.  But  I  can  not,  as  the 
world  goes,  give  employment  at  any  time  to  all  who  ask  it 
of  me,  nor  the  hundredth  part  of  them.  "Work,  work! 
give  us  something  to  do !  —  anything  that  will  secure  us 
honest  bread,"  is  .at  this  moment  the  prayer  of  not  less  than 
Thirty  Thousand  human  beings  within  sound  of  our  City- 
hall  bell.  They  would  gladly  be  producers  of  wealth,  yet 
remain  from  week  to  week  mere  consumers  of  bread  which 


322  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

somebody  has  to  earn.  Here  is  an  enormous  waste  and  loss. 
We  must  devise  a  remedy.  It  is  the  duty,  and  not  less  the 
palpable  interest,  of  the  wealthy,  the  thrifty,  the  tax-paying, 
to  do  so.  The  ultimate  and  thorough  remedy,  I  believe  is 
found  in  ASSOCIATION. 


HOMESTEAD   EXEMPTION. 

THE  general  policy  of  exempting  certain  necessaries  of 
life  from  seizure  and  confiscation  for  debt  no  longer  stands 
in  need  of  vindication.  The  Roman  barbarism  of  selling  the 
debtor  to  satisfy  the  demand  of  his  creditor  and  the  more 
absurd  and  recent  enormity  of  shutting  him  up  in  jail,  to 
be  an  expense  to  the  creditor  and  no  benefit  to  himself  nor 
anybody  else,  are  now  generally  exploded.  Instead  of  de 
priving  the  debtor  of  all  chance  to  earn  a  livelihood,  or  to 
support  his  family,  it  is  the  wiser  effort  of  our  time  to  en 
courage  him  to  work  and  earn  by  reserving  of  his  property 
certain  household  articles  of  prime  necessity  and  his  imple 
ments  of  labor  from  the  clutch  of  the  sheriff.  And  I  feel 
very  sure  that  these  exemptions,  though  sometimes  abused, 
have  in  the  main  operated  justly  and  beneficently.  A  man 
hitherto  in  easy  circumstances  is  often  rendered  bankrup* 
by  misplaced  confidence,  by  endorsing  for  friends,  by  a 
commercial  revulsion,  or  by  a  mistaken  estimate  of  his  own 
resources,  by  a  fire,  a  flood,  or  some  other  calamity.  Of 
course,  as  soon  as  it  is  known  that  he  is  unable  to  pay, 
everybody  insists  on  being  paid,  and  his  remaining  property 
is  sacrificed  for  less  than  half  its  worth,  just  when  he  most 
needs  that  it  should  command  its  full  value.  The  law,  as  it 
has  been,  steps  in  not  to  protect  and  comfort  but  to  harass 
and  skin  him,  until  he  finds  himself  not  merely  destitute  of 
property,  but  of  the  ability  to  earn  any.  His  implements  of 
Jabpr,  the  shelter  of  his  family,  their  bedding,  clothes  and 


HOMESTEAD  EXEMPTION.  303 

cooking-ware,  are  dragged  away  and  sold  for  a  song ;  and 
he  has  the  pleasant  prospect  before  him  of  seeing  anything 
that  he  may  henceforth  be  able  to  earn  carried  off  and  sacri 
ficed  in  like  manner,  without  paying  his  debts  or  contributing 
sensibly  toward  that  consummation.  Law  costs  eat  up 
pretty  much  all  that  such  small  matters  will  fetch,  and  he  is,  if 
left  out  of  prison,  hardly  better  off  than  if  in  it.  Discouraged, 
despairing,  avoided  by  his  sunshine  friends,  he  is,  in  the  ex 
pressive  language  of  the  street,  ruined.  He  sinks  in  stupid 
lethargy  under  the  crushing  load  weighing  upon  him,  and 
becomes  feeble,  heartless,  inefficient  —  very  often  a  depen 
dent  on  the  grudged  charity  of  kindred,  an  idler,  a  pauper, 
a  drunkard. 

Public  sentiment,  enlightened  by  observation  and  reflec 
tion,  has  outgrown  this  policy  and  subjected  it  to  many  im 
portant  modifications.  Imprisonment  for  debt  is  nearly  ex 
tinct  ;  liberal  exemptions  of  implements  of  labor  and  house 
hold  furniture  have  been  enacted  in  most  States ;  and  now 
the  question  is  fairly  presented  —  'Shall  a  shelter  for  wife 
'  and  children,  a  piece  of  ground  wherefrom  to  grow  their 
'  food,  be  added  to  the  present  list  of  exempted  articles  ?' 
To  this  question  I  most  emphatically  answer,  '  Yes  !  Let  the 
4  bankrupt's  wife  and  children  have  a  shelter  in  spite  of  his 
'  misfortunes.  Let  him  still  have  an  assured  opportunity  to 
'  labor  on  and  produce  from  the  soil  now  that  his  other 
'  resources  are  cut  off.  In  our  diseased  and  unstable  social 
*  condition,  the  banker  of  to-day  may  be  the  bankrupt  of  to- 
k  morrow.  Let  us  all  in  prosperity  remember  the  teachings 
'  of  adversity  and  be  merciful.' 

—  NOWT  I  know  all  that  may  be  said,  and  have  said  a  part 
of  it  against  the  selfishness,  the  dishonesty,  the  gross  culpa 
bility,  of  a  large  proportion  of  the  debtor  class.  I  know  that 
no  man  has  a  moral  right  to  give  entertainments,  to  buy  fine 
clothes  and  jewelry,  to  inhabit  a  costly  house  and  live  sump 
tuously,  while  he  is  or  pretends  to  be  unable  to  pay  his 


324  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

honest  debts.  Such  a  man  is  a  swindler,  no  matter  though 
*  Hon.'  is  prefixed  to  his  name  or  '  D.  D.'  appended  to  it. 
I  will  go  as  heartily  and  as  far  as  any  man  for  punishing  him 
as  a  swindler,  but  not  for  turning  his  family  into  the  street  on 
a  simple  allegation  of  debt.  Indeed,  it  is  one  of  my  reasons 
for  urging  the  further  prosecution  of  the  Exemption  policy 
that  I  wish  to  see  loose,  idle  livers  deprived  of  the  facilities 
they  now  enjoy  for  running  into  debt.  Credit,  credit  every 
where —  credit  to  men  of  doubtful  character  or  principles  — 
credit  for  articles  that  never  should  be  bought  except  by 
those  who  have  the  money  to  pay  for  them  and  more  behind 
it — credit  absorbing  half  the  movable  capital  of  the  country 
in  channels  where  it  is  least  useful  —  such  credit  is  among 
the  sorest  evils  of  our  time.  Credit  should  be  given  to  the 
upright,  the  frugal  and  the  industrious  only  —  to  farmers  for 
farms,  implements  or  stock ;  to  mechanics  or  artisans  for 
machinery  or  material ;  to  forwarders  and  exchangers  to 
enable  them  to  purchase  produce  with  cash  and  market  it 
advantageously  for  all  parties.  But  credit  for  silks,  pianos 
and  Brussels  carpets — for  wines,  liquors  and  perfumes  — 
this  is  about  as  common  and  as  extensive  as  the  right  sort, 
and  it  is  bad  policy  to  encourage  such  by  legislation.  I  did 
hope  that  a  mortal  blow  had  been  struck  at  such  credit  by 
the  National  Bankrupt  Law  ;  but  faction  and  folly  destroyed 
that  law  just  when  its  evils  had  been  all  encountered  and  its 
blessings  were  about  to  be  experienced.  I  shall  rejoice  if  the 
same  end  is  reached,  to  a  more  limited  extent,  by  Homestead 
Exemption. 

The  soundness  of  the  principle  of  Homestead  Exemption 
is  not  generally  questioned  by  the  adversaries  of  the  policy. 
They  have  a  safer  mode  of  warfare  than  that.  No  bill  can 
be  drawn  so  as  to  hit  their  several  tastes — if  the  amount 
exempted  is  high  enough  for  one  it  is  too  high  for  another ; 
and  if  you  reduce  it  to  the  pattern  of  the  latter,  the  former  will 
vote  against  it  as  a  mockery  and  worse  than  nothing.  If  a 


HOMESTEAD  EXEMPTION.  325 

House  passes  a  bill  notwithstanding,  the  Senate  will  amend, 
or  postpone,  or  fail  to  act  upon  it,  and  the  measure  fails. 
Yet  already  Wisconsin,  Georgia,  Texas,  New-York,  and  I 
believe  some  other  States,  have  Homestead  Exemption  laws, 
and  nobody  even  suggests  their  repeal.  Those  States  would 
as  soon  think  of  going  back  to  the  cast-off  atrocity  of  strip 
ping  a  man  of  al1  he  has  and  shutting  him  up  in  jail  without 
trial  on  a  mere  allegation  or  suspicion  of  debt.  A  secure 
though  humble  home  to  every  family  is  one  of  the  generous 
aspirations  of  our  age,  and  it  will  yet  be  established  as  one 
of  the  cardinal  principles  of  a  Republican  polity.  It  will 
prove  a  potent  element  of  a  true  and  genial  Conservatism. 
The  timorous  people  who  used  to  declaim  against  the  un- 
safety  of  a  Government  swayed  by  all  manner  of  vagrants 
and  loafers  were  not  so  very  wrong  as  to  the  evil,  though 
grievously  mistaken  as  to  the  remedy,  which  is  to  be  found  in 
supplying  these  vagrants  with  Homes  and  not  in  depriving 
them  of  Votes.  A  Republic  in  which  every  man  shall  feel 
that  he  has  interests  to  protect,  rights  to  defend,  must  be  the 
strongest  government  on  earth,  and  such  will  ours  be  when 
every  inhabitant  shall  have  his  own  secure  Home.  Now 
Homestead  Exemption  will  not  directly  provide  any  one  with 
a  freehold  who  is  without  it,  but  it  will  secure  one  to  each  man 
or  woman  who  has  it,  and  thus  strongly  impel  every  man  to 
acquire  one.  The  young  man  will  naturally  say,  '  If  I  work 
'  for  and  pay  the  price  of  a  dwelling  and  piece  of  land  while 
'  I  am  single  and  can  save,  I  may  be  very  sure  that  no  mis- 
*  fortune  in  after-life  can  deprive  me  of  a  home  so  long  as  I 
1  choose  to  retain  it.'  That  the  end  of  this  will  be  frugality 
in  youth  and  independence  in  after-life  to  thousands,  who 
otherwise  would  stumble  on  to  maturity  heedless  and  im 
provident,  I  can  not  doubt.  And,  in  spite  of  distrust, 
timidity,  indolence  and  avarice,  the  good  work  will  go  on, 
until  the  enjoyment  of  Inviolable  Homes  shall  be  commen 
surate  with  the  existence  of  Republican  Freedom. 
28 


HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 


LIVING  AND   MEANS. 

ONE  of  the  most  mischievous  phrases  in  which  a  rotten 
Morality,  a  radically  false  and  vicious  Public  Sentiment  dis 
guise  themselves,  is  that  which  characterizes  certain  individ 
uals  as  destitute  of  financial  capacity.  A  l  kind,  amiable, 
'  generous,  good  sort  of  man,'  (so  runs  the  varnish,)  *  but 
'  utterly  unqualified  for  the  management  of  his  own  finances' 
— '  a  mere  child  in  everything  relating  to  money,'  &c.  &c.  — 
meaning  that  with  an  income  of  five  hundred  dollars  a  year 
he  persisted  in  spending  one  thousand  ;  or  with  an  income 
of  two  to  three  thousand  dollars,  he  regularly  spent  five  to 
eight  thousand,  according  to  his  ability  to  run  in  debt  or  the 
credulity  of  others  in  trusting  him. 

The  victims  of  this  immorality  —  debtor  as  well  as  cred 
itor —  are  entitled  to  more  faithful  dealing  at  the  hands  of 
those  not  directly  affected  by  the  misdemeanors  of  the 
former.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  community  to  rebuke  and  re 
press  these  pernicious  glosses,  making  the  truth  heard  and 
felt  that  inordinate  expenditure  is  knavery  and  crime.  No 
man  has  a  moral  right  thus  to  lavish  on  his  own  appetites 
money  which  he  has  not  earned  and  does  not  really  need. 
If  Public  Opinion  were  sound  on  this  subject — if  a  man 
living  beyond  his  means  when  his  means  were  commensurate 
with  his  real  needs,  were  subjected  to  the  reprehension  he 
deserves — the  evil  would  be  instantly  checked  and  ulti 
mately  eradicated. 

The  world  is  full  of  people  who  can't  imagine  why  they 
don't  prosper  like  their  neighbors,  when  the  real  obstacle  is 
not  in  banks  nor  tariffs,  in  bad  public  policy  nor  hard  times, 
but  in  their  own  extravagance  and  heedless  ostentation.  The 
young  mechanic  or  clerk  marries  and  takes  a  house,  which 


LIVING  AND  MEANS.  327 

he  proceeds  to  furnish  twice  as  expensively  as  he  can  afford, 
and  then  his  wife,  instead  of  taking  hold  to  help  him  earn  a 
livelihood  by  doing  her  own  work,  must  have  a  hired  servant 
to  help  her  spend  his  limited  earnings.  Ten  years  afterward 
you  will  find  him  struggling  on  under  a  double  load  of  debts 
and  children,  wondering  why  the  luck  was  always  against 
him,  while  his  friends  regret  his  unhappy  destitution  of  finan 
cial  ability.  Had  they  from  the  first  been  frank  and  honest, 
he  need  not  have  been  so  unlucky. 

Through  every  grade  of  society  this  vice  of  inordinate  ex 
penditure  insinuates  itself.  The  single  man  '  hired  out'  in 
the  country  at  ten  to  fifteen  dollars  per  month,  who  contrives 
to  dissolve  his  year's  earnings  in  frolics  and  fine  clothes ; 
the  clerk  who  has  three  to  five  hundred  dollars  a  year  and 
melts  down  twenty  to  fifty  of  it  into  liquor  and  cigars,  are 
paralleled  by  the  young  merchant  who  fills  a  spacious  house 
with  costly  furniture,  gives  dinners  and  drives  a  fast  horse 
on  the  strength  of  the  profits  he  expects  to  realize  when  his 
goods  are  all  sold  and  his  notes  all  paid.  Let  a  man  have  a 
genius  for  spending,  and  whether  his  income  be  a  dollar  a 
day  or  a  dollar  a  minute  it  is  equally  certain  to  prove  inade 
quate.  If  dining,  wining  and  party-giving  won't  help  him 
through  with  it,  building,  gaming  and  speculating  will  be 
sure  to.  The  bottomless  pocket  will  never  fill,  no  matter 
how  bounteous  the  stream  pouring  into  it.  The  man  who 
(being  single)  does  not  save  money  on  six  dollars  per  week 
will  not  be  apt  to  on  sixty  ;  and  he  who  does  not  lay  up 
something  in  his  first  year  of  independent  exertion  will  be 
pretty  likely  to  wear  a  poor  man's  hair  into  his  grave. 

No  man  who  has  the  natural  use  of  his  faculties  and  his 
muscles  has  any  right  to  tax  others  with  the  cost  of  his  sup 
port,  as  this  class  of  non-financial  gentlemen  habitually  do. 
It  is  their  common  mistake  to  fancy  that  if  a  debt  is  only 
paid  at  last  the  obligations  of  the  debtor  is  fulfilled,  but  the 
fact  is  not  so.  A  man  who  sells  his  property  for  another's 


328  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

promise  to  pay  next  week,  or  next  month,  and  is  compelled 
to  wear  out  a  pair  of  boots  in  running  after  his  due,  which 
he  finally  gets  after  a  year  or  two,  is  never  really  paid.  Very 
often,  he  has  lost  half  the  face  of  his  demand  by  not  having 
the  money  when  he  needed  it,  beside  the  cost  and  vexation 
of  running  after  it.  There  is  just  one  way  to  pay  an  obli 
gation  in  full,  and  that  is  to  pay  it  when  due.  He  who  keeps 
up  a  running  fight  with  bills  and  loans  through  life  is  con 
tinually  living  on  other  men's  means,  is  a  serious  burden  and 
a  detriment  to  those  who  deal  with  him,  although  his  estate 
should  finally  pay  every  dollar  of  his  legal  obligations. 

Inordinate  expenditure  is  the  cause  of  a  great  share  of  the 
crime  and  consequent  misery  which  devastate  the  world. 
The  clerk  who  spends  more  than  he  earns  is  fast  qualifying 
himself  for  a  gambler  and  a  thief;  the  trader  or  mechanic 
who  overruns  his  income  is  very  certain  to  become  in  time 
a  trickster  and  a  cheat.  Wherever  you  see  a  man  spending 
faster  than  he  earns,  there  look  out  for  villainy  to  be  devel 
oped,  though  it  be  the  farthest  thing  possible  from  his  present 
thought. 

When  the  world  shall  have  become  wiser  and  its  stand 
ard  of  morality  more  lofty,  it  will  perceive  and  affirm  that 
profuse  expenditure,  even  by  one  who  can  pecuniarily  afford 
it,  is  pernicious  and  unjustifiable  —  that  a  man,  however 
wealthy,  has  no  right  to  lavish  on  his  own  appetites,  his 
tastes  or  his  ostentation,  that  which  might  have  raised  hun 
dreds  from  destitution  and  despair  to  comfort  and  usefulness. 
But  that  is  an  improvement  in  public  sentiment  which  must 
be  waited  for,  while  the  other  is  more  ready  and  obvious. 

The  meanness,  the  dishonesty,  the  iniquity,  of  squander 
ing  thousands  unearned,  and  keeping  others  out  of  money 
that  is  justly  theirs,  have  rarely  been  urged  and  enforced  as 
they  should  be.  They  need  but  to  be  considered  and  un 
derstood  to  be  universally  loathed  and  detested. 


PITY  HIS  FAMILY.  329 


*  PITY  HIS  FAMILY/ 

A  MAN  falls  into  embarrassments,  which  ultimately  over 
whelm  him  in  bankruptcy  or  drive  him  into  roguery  and  crime. 
He  was  yesterday  respected,  influential  and  supposed  to  be 
affluent,  and  his  family  were  treated  and  treated  themselves 
accordingly ;  but  to-day  he  is  disgraced  and  steered  clear 
of — without  resources  or  prospects  —  very  likely  in  prison 
and  exposed  to  ignominious  punishment.  — '  Vile  wretch  !' 
say  the  million  ;  '  it  is  good  enough  for  him,  but  we  must 
pity  his  poor  family.' 

—  Certainly,  we  must  pity  them — pity  all  who  suffer  — 
still  more  all  who  sin  and  suffer.  They  need  pity,  and 
there  is  no  danger  that  we  shall  pity  them  too  much.  —  But 
the  impression  conveyed  of  the  innocence  of  the  fallen  man's 
family  and  their  unmerited  exposure  to  want  and  ignominy, 
is  often  very  far  from  the  truth. 

In  fact,  half  the  men  who  are  loathed  as  dragging  down 
their  families  to  shame  and  destitution  are  really  themselves 
dragged  down  by  those  families  —  driven  to  bankruptcy, 
shame  and  crime  by  the  thoughtless  and  basely  selfish 
extravagance  of  wife  and  children.  Let  a  man  be  in  the 
way  of  receiving  considerable  money,  and  having  property 
in  his  hands,  and  his  family  can  rarely  be  made  to  compre 
hend  and  realize  that  there  is  any  limit  to  his  ability  to 
give  and  spend.  Fine  dresses  and  ornaments  for  wife  and 
daughters  ;  spending  money  and  broadcloth  for  hopeful 
sons  —  costly  parties  every  now  and  then,  and  richer  furni 
ture  and  more  of  it  at  all  times — these  are  a  few  of  the 
blind  drains  on  '  the  governor's'  means  which  are  perpetu 
ally  in  action.  '  O,  what's  a  hundred  dollars  to  a  man  doing 
such  a  business?'  is  the  indignant  question  in  case  of  any 


330  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

demur  or  remonstrance  on  his  part.  Not  one  of  them  could 
bear  to  disgrace  him  by  earning  a  dollar;  they  couldn't  go 
out  shabbily  dressed,  for  fear  his  credit  would  suffer.  They 
F  can't  see  how  a  man  who  can  get  discounts  in  Bank  need 
ever  be  short  of  money  or  stingy  in  using  it.  All  his  talk 
of  difficulties  or  hard  times  they  regard  as  customary  fables, 
intended  to  scrimp  their  drafts  on  his  purse  or  enhance  their 
sense  of  his  generosity.  When  it  is  so  easy  to  fill  up  a 
check,  why  will  he  be  hoggish  ?  Let  him  give  fifty  dollars 
to  any  philanthropic  object,  or  invest  five  hundred,  however 
safely,  in  any  attempt  to  meliorate  the  sufferings  of  the  Poor, 
and  they  now  see  clearly  that  he  has  hoards  of  gold,  and 
can  just  as  well  give  them  all  dresses  and  jewels  as  not.  — 
Thus  the  man  of  means  or  of  business  is  too  often  regarded 
by  his  family  as  a  sponge  to  be  squeezed,  a  goose  to  be 
plucked,  an  orange  to  be  sucked,  a  spring  to  be  drank  from 
when  thirsty  without  at  all  diminishing  its  flow.  The  stuff  is 
there  in  profusion  —  the  only  trouble  is  to  make  him  give  it  up. 
In  vain  he  remonstrates  —  implores — puts  down  his  foot. 
He  can  not  be  eternally  contending  with  those  he  loves 
best — he  wants  quiet  at  home  in  order  to  mature  his  plans 
and  perfect  his  operations.  If  he  resists  importunity,  the 
pumps  are  set  going,  and  what  man  can  stand  the  April  show 
ers  of  feminine  sorrow  ?  He  gives  way  at  last  and  throws 
down  the  money  demanded,  hoping  that  some  great  news  by 
the  next  steamship,  some  turn  of  luck  in  his  business,  will 
make  it  up  to  him.  Perhaps  it  does,  and  he  floats  on  ;  per 
haps  it  don't,  and  this  last  feather  has  broken  the  elephant's 
back.  The  end,  however  near  or  distant,  is  morally  certain. 
Treated  always  as  a  mine  to  be  opened  at  will,  he  finally 
grows  desperate  and  rushes  into  reckless  speculation  or 
blasting  crime,  and  is  overwhelmed  with  ruin.  '  Selfish 
villain !'  say  the  ignorant  crowd ;  '  how  could  he  run  such 
a  career?  How  we  pity  his  family!' — No  doubt  of  it! 
But  if  you  knew  more,  perhaps  you  would  pity  him. 


FLOGGING  IN  THE  NAVY.  331 


FLOGGING  IN  THE  NAVY. 

THE  primary  division  of  the  human  species  on  shore  re 
solves  the  individuals  into  Men  and  Women  ;  on  shipboard 
into  Officers  and  Men,  though  the  latter  term  very  unfitly 
expresses  the  light  in  which  Seamen  are  regarded  by  Offi 
cers.  The  crew  are  practically  Hands  ;  sometimes  Legs 
also  ;  at  others  Backs  ;  but  as  to  any  clear  conception  that 
they  are  truly  Men,  it  is  neither  expressed  nor  implied  in 
our  theory  or  practice  of  Naval  discipline.  In  the  contem 
plation  of  that  discipline,  the  crew  are  beasts,  dogs,  devils  — 
anything  but  men. 

A  seaman  enlists  into  the  Navy,  allured  by  the  notion  of 
serving  his  country  and  helping  to  maintain  and  extend  the 
glory  of  the  Stars  and  Stripes.  He  has  the  faults  of  his  class 
and  condition  —  is  reckless,  headstrong,  easily  provoked  to 
quarrel,  and  has  an  appetite  for  grog  and  other  sensual  de 
pravities.  Yet  he  means  to  behave  himself  and  to  do  his 
duty,  and  for  a  time  no  complaint  is  made.  But,  as  a  part 
of  his  rations,  an  allowance  of  Alcoholic  Liquor  is  daily  dealt 
out  to  him  —  not  enough  to  make  him  drunk,  but  quite 
enough  to  maintain  and  increase  the  appetite  for  Alcohol  if 
he  has  already  acquired  it,  and  to  create  it  if  he  has  hitherto 
escaped  or  overcome  it.  Not  to  drink  it  would  be  to  subject 
himself  to  ridicule  and  dislike  among  his  messmates,  so  he 
takes  it  down.  By-and-by  the  ship  reaches  port,  and  he  with 
others  has  a  few  hours'  liberty  to  go  on  shore.  With  appetites 
for  liquor  thus  formed  or  increased  on  shipboard,  the  jolly 
mess  betake  themselves  in  hot  haste  to  the  grog-shop  first,  and 
then  to  other  dens  of  debauchery,  and  when  their  leave  has 
expired,  some  are  too  confused  and  brutified  clearly  to  know 
or  seriously  to  care  where  they  are  or  what  they  are  doing. 


332  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

If  all  hurry  on  board  at  the  last  moment,  some  of  them  are 
pretty  certain  to  be  grossly  intoxicated,  which  is  of  course 
a  punishable  offence.  These  are  to  be  hauled  up  as  soon 
as  the  ship's  convenience  will  permit,  their  backs  stripped 
and  lashed  with  a  heavy,  cutting,  torturing  whip  known  as 
the  cat-o'-nine-tails,  plied  with  all  the  strength  of  an  athletic 
sub-officer.  One  dozen  lashes  is  the  usual  allowance  for 
such  an  offence  as  drunkenness ;  and  each  lash  makes  at 
least  a  black-and-blue  stripe  across  the  offender's  back  of  the 
width  of  your  finger — often  takes  off  the  skin  and  causes 
the  blood  to  fly  freely,  leaving  the  back  as  raw  as  a  beef 
steak.  More  serious  offences  are  punished  with  more 
lashes  —  striking  an  Officer  with  death.  But  lashing, 
threshing,  gashing,  is  the  great  reliance  for  '  discipline'  on 
board  our  Republican  Navy,  and  many  officers  resort  to  it 
on  the  most  trifling  pretexts.  *  Looking  insolently  at  an 
officer,'  is  one  of  the  more  serious  offences,  while  there  are 
cases  officially  reported  by  the  commanders  themselves 
where  men  have  been  thus  gashed  for  not  cooking  an  officer's 
dinner  to  his  liking,  for  spilling  water  on  the  deck,  not 
stowing  a  hammock  away  neatly,  &c.  &c.  Six  thousand 
lashes,  such  as  I  have  described,  have  been  dealt  out  during 
one  cruise  to  the  crew  of  a  single  vessel  —  that  is,  so  many 
were  reported  to  the  Navy  Department  by  the  commander, 
while  it  is  notorious  that  nothing  like  all  are  reported,  and 
officers  have  boasted  that  they  never  would  report  all,  nor 
any  more  than  they  chose.  That  men  have  been  flogged 
by  the  dozen  for  no  better  reason  than  such  as  the  drunken 
ness  of  their  superior  supplied,  is  notorious.  The  appetite 
for  cruel  spectacles  grows  by  what  it  feeds  on,  and  an  officer 
accustomed  to  order  and  oversee  the  flogging  of  half  a  dozen 
men  just  before  morning  prayers  might  as  well  be  expected 
to  do  without  his  bitters  as  without  the  added  stimulus  of 
writhing  flesh  and  spirting  blood.  If  there  are  no  real  of 
fences,  his  gloomy  fancy,  his  flagging  spirits,  will  invent  or 


FLOGGING  IN  THE  NAVY.  333 

imagine  some,  for  the  sake  of  the  fillip  they  crave  so  insa 
tiably. 

What  must  be  the  effect  of  this  on  the  seamen,  whether 
personally  flogged  or  spared  ? 

They  have  no  hope  of  promotion  —  no  chance  of  ever 
rising  to  the  quarter-deck  —  no  prospect  of  an  honorable 
niche  in  history  nor  of  laying  their  bones  beneath  a  marble 
monument.  If  they  are  lucky  enough  to  spend  their  last  days 
in  a  hospital  and  be  buried  at  all,  they  do  well.  Every  year 
sees  a  new  squad  of  greenhorns,  —  mere  boys,  and  not 
favorable  specimens  at  that  —  sent  aboard  the  ship,  not  to 
learn  and  serve,  but  to  govern  and  direct.  These  sons  and 
nephews  of  Congressmen  or  local  dignitaries  of  some  sort 
are  often  provided  with  commissions  in  the  Navy  because 
their  past  careers  of  idleness  and  dissipation  have  unfitted 
them  for  usefulness  on  shore,  and  rendered  them  a  burden 
if  not  a  terror  to  their  respective  families.  (Of  course,  there 
are  many  of  a  different  order,  but  there  are  many  of  this 
stamp  as  well.)  They  step  on  shipboard  immature  except 
in  depravity,  knowing  not  even  the  alphabet  of  their  novel 
profession,  but  thoroughly  comprehending  that  they  are  offi 
cers  and  thus  gentlemen,  while  sailors  are  the  dust  beneath 
their  feet.  Let  '  an  old  salt'  who  fought  with  Bainbridge, 
Porter  or  Perry,  venture  to  look  queer  at  one  of  the  new 
rnid's  hourly  exhibitions  of  ignorance  in  nautical  matters, 
and  wo  to  that  unlucky  soul !  The  scars  won  in  capturing 
the  Guerrierc  or  Macedonian  shall  be  as  feathers  in  the  way 
of  that  dignitary's  vengeance.  And  thus  the  brutalizing  of 
men  and  officers  by  lash  and  gash  goes  on  from  day  to  day. 
The  officers  have  been  educated  to  deem  it  necessary  ;  it 
magnifies  their  importance  and  draws  the  line  .sharply  and 
broadly  between  the  flogged  and  the  flogging  classes.  The 
seamen  are  dumb  —  nobody  hears  nor  heeds  them.  The 
People  are  ignorant  and  indifferent  ;  Congress  is  preoccupied 
and  hosiilfj.  '  The  Navy,' in  its  contemplation,  means  tin1 


334  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

officers,  and  possibly  the  vessels ;  the  men  are  of  no  ac 
count  there.  Commodores,  Captains,  Lieutenants  and  Mid 
shipmen  have  fathers,  brothers  and  cousins  in  either  House  ; 
Jack  has  none.  So  Reform  is  shirked  or  scouted,  and  Lash 
and  Gash  go  on.  There  is  no  hope  of  a  change  but  through 
enlightening  and  arousing  the  mass  of  the  People. 

What  is  essentially  needed  may  be  summed  up  in  a  very 
short  sentence — •  Make  the  Navy  Republican.  Open  a  gang 
way  from  the  forecastle  to  the  quarter-deck.  At  the  end  of 
every  year  make  it  the  sworn  duty  of  the  commanders  and 
lieutenants  to  report  to  the  Navy  Department  the  names  of 
the  ablest  and  best  seamen  in  the  ship  for  promotion,  and  if 
the  crew  consist  of  more  than  a  hundred  men,  let  one  such 
be  reported  for  every  hundred  or  major  fraction  of  a  hun 
dred.  Let  the  crew  in  like  manner  assemble  by  themselves, 
and  each  giving  his  word  of  honor  to  render  a  true  judgment, 
let  each  man  cast  a  ballot  for  the  seaman  who  in  his  opinion 
has  best  served  and  displayed  most  nautical  ability  during 
the  past  year.  Let  these  votes  be  duly  authenticated  and 
transmitted  unopened  to  the  Department,  and  if  the  judg 
ment  of  the  officers  and  men  be  found  to  accord  in  any  case, 
let  a  commission  issue  forthwith.  If  not,  let  future  commis 
sions  be  given  in  equal  numbers  to  those  recommended 
by  the  officers  and  seamen  respectively,  the  Department 
exercising  a  discretion  as  to  which  among  the  recommen 
dations  from  the  various  vessels  seem  most  emphatic  and 
reliable.  But  make  the  rule  absolute  and  inflexible  that 
no  one  shall  henceforth  receive  a  commission  in  the  Navy  un 
til  he  shall  have  earned  it  by  manifest  ability  and  faithful 
service  as  a  sailor  therein. 

Let  this  system  have  two  years'  fair  trial,  and  it  would 
matter  little,  except  for  the  principle  of  the  thing,  whether 
Congress  directed  the  Abolition  of  Flogging  or  not.  It 
would  be  dead,  beyond  the  power  of  resurrection.  Officers 
promoted  from  the  forecastle  would  have  a  tenderness  for 


FLOGGING  IN  THE  NAVY".  335 

Jack's  infirmities,  which  those  manufactured  as  at  present 
can  never  feel.  Seamen,  with  the  eyes  of  both  officers  and 
messmates  steadily  watching  to  see  wrho  ought  to  be  reported 
for  commissions,  would  have  a  very  different  and  far  more 
effectual  stimulus  to  well-doing  than  Lash  and  Gash  can 
ever  afford.  And  the  Navy,  thus  proffering  an  honorable 
career  with  ultimate  distinction  and  a  liberal  support  through 
life  to  every  well-behaving  seaman,  would  be  crowded  with 
the  noblest  spirits  that  sail  the  ocean,  instead  of  being  left 
to  those  who  have  banished  the  hope  of  rising  in  the  world 
and  to  whom  the  scourge  is  no  longer  a  conscious  degrada 
tion.  Make  the  Navy  Republican,  and  the  spirit  will  be 
aroused  which  carried  the  arms  of  Revolutionary  France  in 
triumph  to  Rome,  Cairo,  Vienna,  Berlin  and  Moscow  by 
simply  opening  the  road  of  promotion  to  good  conduct, 
without  regard  to  birth  or  breeding.  Make  the  Navy  Re 
publican,  and  it  will  be  the  most  efficient  and  formidable  of 
its  size  that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  In  thus  doing  justice 
to  the  fundamental  principles  of  our  Political  Fabric,  we 
shall  palpably  hasten  the  advent  of  universal  freedom  and 
happiness,  wherein  Lash  and  Gash  shall  be  banished  for  ever 
from  the  world. 


THE  UNION  OF  WORKERS.* 

THE  ancient  Egyptians  had  a  custom  of  seating  at  their 
feasts  the  robed  skeleton  of  some  departed  friend,  whose 
stern  silence  contrasted  strikingly  with  the  mirth  and  hilarity 
of  his  living  companions.  I  believe  scholars  are  not  agreed 
as  to  the  purpose  and  meaning  of  this  strange  custom — 
whether  the  rigid,  silent  guests  were  intended  to  say  to  the 
festal  throng — "Enjoy  and  revel  while  you  may,  for  Time 

"  An  Address  to  the  Printers  of  New  York,  delivered  before  the  N.  Y.  Typo 
graphical  Society,  at  their  Celebration  of  Franklin's  Birth-Day,  Jan.  17th,  1850. 


330  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

*  flies,  Man  perishes  ;  in  a  few  years  all  is  dust,  is  nothing  — 
1  therefore,  make  haste  to  quaff  the  wine  while  it  sparkles,  to 
4  seize  pleasure  while  the  capacity  of  enjoyment  remains  to 
'  you"  — or  rather  to  impress  the  opposite  sentiment — "  Life 

*  is  short ;   Life  is  earnest ;   stupendous  consequences  hang 
'  suspended  on  your  use  or  abuse  of  the  speck  of  time  allot- 

*  ted  you  ;  therefore,  be  temperate  in  your  indulgence,  mode- 
'  rate  in  your  festive  mirth,  and,  seeing  in  what  I  am  what 

*  you  soon  must  be,  consider  and  beware  !" — I  shall  not  of 
course  pretend  to  decide  this  grave  question,  though  I  shall 
assume  for  the  occasion  that  the  latter  is  the  true  rendering ; 
and,  in  accordance  with  the   elemental  idea,  I  venture  to 
assume  among  you  to-night  the  functions  of  the  Egyptians' 
silent  monitor,  and  while  others  stir  you  with  lofty  eloquence 
or  charm  you  with  dulcet  flatteries  —  with  pictures  of  the 
grand  achievements  of  our  Art  in  the  past  and  its  brilliant 
prospects  for  the  future,  I  shall  speak  to  you  frankly  of  our 
deficiencies,  our  failings,  and  the  urgent  demands  upon  us 
for  new  and   more  arduous  exertions  in   yet  unrecognized 
fields  of  duty. 

It  is  now  some  four  centuries  since  the  discovery  or  in 
vention  of  our  Art,  fully  three  sinc^  our  continent  began 
to  be  the  home  of  civilized  men,  and  more  than  two  since 
the  Pilgrim  fugitives  first  landed  on  Plymouth  Rock.  Since 
that  landing,  and  even  within  the  last  century,  what  amazing 
strides  have  been  made  in  the  diffusion  of  Knowledge  and 
the  perfection  of  the  implements  and  processes  of  Indus 
try —  in  the  efficiency  of  Human  Labor  and  the  facilitation 
of  intercourse  between  country  and  country,  clime  and 
clime !  The  steam-engine,  the  spinning-jenny,  the  power- 
loom  ;  the  canal,  steam-ship,  power-press,  railroad  and  light 
ning  telegraph  —  these,  in  their  present  perfection  and 
efficiency,  are  a  few  of  the  trophies  of  human  genius  and 
Inbor  within  even  the  last  century. 

P>ut  while  Labor  has  thur.  doubled  and  quadrupled  its  own 


THE  UNION  OF  WORKERS.  337 

efficacy  in  the  production  of  whatever  is   needful   to   the 
physical  sustenance,  intellectual  improvement  and  social  en 
joyment  of  Man,  I  do  not  find  that  there  has  been  a  cor 
responding    melioration   in   the   condition   of  the  Laborer. 
That  there  has  been  some  improvement  I  do  not  deny ;  but 
has  it  been  at  all  commensurate  with  the  general  progress  of 
our  race  in  whatever  pertains  to  physical  convenience  or 
comfort  ?     I  think  not ;  and  I  could  not  help  pondering  this 
matter  even  while  our  orator's  silvery  tones  were  delighting 
our  ears  with  poetical   descriptions  of  the  wonders  which 
Science  and  Invention  have  achieved  and  are  achieving.     I 
could  not  help  considering  that,  while  Labor  builds  far  more 
sumptuous  mansions  in  our  day  than  of  old,  furnishing  them 
far  more  gorgeously  and  luxuriously,  the  laborer  who  builds 
those   mansions   lives   oftenest  in   a  squalid  lodging,  than 
which  the  builders  of  palaces  in  the  fifteenth  century  can 
hardly  have  dwelt  in  more  wretched ;   and  that  while  the 
demands  for  labor,  the  uses  of  labor,  the  efficiency  of  labor, 
are  multiplied  and  extended  on  every  side  by  the  rush  of 
invention  and  the  growth  of  luxury  around  us,  yet  in  this 
middle  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  (call  it  the  last  year  of  the 
first  half  or  the  first  year  of  the  last  half  as  you  please)  La 
bor  is  a  drug  in  the  market — that  the  temperate,  efficient, 
upright  Worker  often  finds  the  comfortable  maintenance  and 
proper  education  of  his  children  beyond  his  ability  —  and 
that,  in   this  thriving  Commercial   Emporium  of  the  New 
World,  this  trophy  and  pride  of  Christian  Civilization  — 
there  are  at  this  day  not  less  than  Forty  Thousand  human 
beings   anxious  to  earn   the  bread  of  honest  industry  but 
vainly  seeking,  and   painfully,  despairingly  awaiting  oppor 
tunity  for  so  doing.     This  last  is  the  feature  of  our  condi 
tion  which  seems  to  me  most  important  and  commanding, 
and  it  is  to  this,  on  occasions  like  the  present,  and  in  listen 
ing  to  such  orations  as  that  which  has  just  delighted  us,  that 
my  thoughts  are  irresistibly  turned. 
29 


338  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

What  can  be  the  reason  of  this  ?     Why  is  it  that  these 
Forty  Thousand  strong-handed,  willing  Workers  stand  here 
thus  fixed,  enchained,  in  loathed,  despairing  idleness  ?    Why 
are  they  compelled  to  wear  out  our  pavements  in  hurrying 
hither  and  thither  in  anxious,  heart-sick  quest  of  something 
to  do? — with  downcast  looks  and  trembling  voice  beseech 
ing  some  fellow  man  to  give  them  leave  to  labor  for  their 
bread  ?     I  trust  no  one  here  gives  any  heed  to  the  mumbling 
of  self-styled  Political  Economists  about  '  Over-Production' 
and  the  kindred  phrases  with  which  counsel  is  darkened. 
'  Over-Production'  — of  what  ?  Where  ?  Can  there  be  over 
production   of  Food,  when  so  many,  even  in  our  midst, 
are  suffering  the  pangs  of  famine  ?     *  Over-Production'  of 
Clothing  and  Fabrics,  while  our  streets  swarm  with  men, 
women  and  children  who  are  not  half-clad,  and  who  shiver 
through  the  night  beneath  the  clothing  they  have  worn  by 
day  ?     '  Over-Production'  of  Dwellings,  when  not  half  the 
families  of  our  city  have  adequate  and  comfortable  habita 
tions,  not  to  speak  of  that  large  class  whose  lodgings  are 
utterly   incompatible   with    decency   and    morality?      No, 
friends  !  there  is  no  l  Over-Production,'  save  of  articles  per 
nicious  and  poisonous,  like  Alcoholic  Liquors,  Lewd  Books, 
implements  of  Gaming,  &c.     Of  whatever  conduces  to  hu 
man  sustenance,  comfort  or  true  education,  there  is  not  and 
never  has  been  too  much  produced,  although,  owing  to  im 
perfect  and  vicious  arrangements  for  Distribution,  there  may 
often  be  a  glut  in  the  warehouses  of  Trade,  while  thousands 
greatly   need    and  would    gladly   purchase  if  they  could. 
What  the  world  eminently  requires  is  some  wise  adjustment, 
some  remodeling  of  the  Social  machinery,  diminishing  its 
friction,  whereby  every  person  willing  to  work  shall  assu 
redly  have  work  to  do,  and  the  just  reward  of  that  work  in 
the  articles  most  essential  to  his  sustenance  and  comfort.     It 
may  be  that  there  is  indeed   a  surplus  of  that  particular 
product  which  some   man's  labor  could  most  skillfully  or 


THE  UNION  OF  WORKERS.  339 

rapidly  produce,  —  Pianos,  Watches,  or  Gauzes,  for  exam 
ple —  and  therefore  it  maybe  advisable  to  intermit  for  a 
season  the  production  of  these  —  yet  the  skill,  the  faculty, 
the  muscular  energy  not  required  in  that  particular  department 
of  production  might  nevertheless  be  made  available,  even 
though  in  a  subordinate  degree,  in  the  fabrication  of  some 
kindred  product  for  which  there  is  a  demand  among  the 
general  mass  of  consumers.  I  maintain,  then,  that  in  our 
day  no  man  should  be  compelled  to  stand  idle  or  wander 
vainly  in  search  of  employment,  even  though  that  particular 
calling  for  which  he  is  best  fitted  has  now  no  place  for  him, 
but  that  the  palpable  self-interest  of  the  community  should 
prescribe  the  creation  of  some  Social  Providence  expressly 
to  take  care  that  no  man,  woman  or  child  shall  ever  stand 
uselessly  idle  when  willing  and  anxious  to  work.  Even  the 
most  injudicious  application  of  the  labor  now  wasted  through 
lack  of  opportunity  could  not  fail  to  increase  the  National 
Wealth  to  the  extent  of  millions  on  millions  per  annum, 
while  its  effect  on  the  condition  of  the  Laboring  Class,  in 
preserving  them  from  temptation,  dissipation  and  crime, 
would  be  incalculably  beneficent. 

— Now  what  I  stand  here  to  complain  of  is  the  indiffer 
ence  and  inattention  of  the  Laboring  Mass,  and  especially 
of  those  entitled  to  a  leading  position  in  it,  like  the  Printers, 
to  the  discussion  of  a  truth  so  grand  and  so  fruitful  as  the 
Right  to  Labor.  It  is  more  discussed,  more  pondered,  to 
day,  by  Merchants,  Capitalists,  Scholars,  and  men  who  are 
called  Aristocrats,  than  by  the  mass  of  those  who  earn  their 
living  by  the  sweat  of  the  face.  It  is  now  eighteen  years 
since  I  came  to  this  city  a  journeyman  printer,  during  which 
years  I  have  been  intimately  connected  with  our  craft  in  one 
capacity  or  another,  and  yet  I  have  never  heard  of  a  meeting 
of  Printers  to  consider  and  discuss  the  Rights  generally  of 
Labor,  the  causes  of  its  depression,  the  means  of  its  ad 
vancement.  During  these  eighteen  years  there  have  been 


340  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

hard  times  and  good  times,  so  called ;  seasons  of  activity 
and  seasons  of  depression  —  in  the  course  of  which  the 
country  has  been  '  saved,'  I  forget  how  often  —  our  city  has 
doubled  in  population  and  more  than  doubled  in  wealth  — 
and  yet  the  Laboring  Class  as  a  Class  is  just  where  it  was 
when  I  came  here,  or,  if  anything,  in  a  worse  condition,  as 
the  increased  valuation  of  Property  has  caused  advance  in 
Rents  and  in  some  other  necessaries  of  life.  Individuals 
have  risen  out  of  the  Laboring  Class,  becoming  buyers  of 
Labor  and  sellers  of  its  Products,  and  grown  rich  thereby ; 
but  the  condition  of  the  Laboring  Class,  as  such,  has  not 
improved,  and  I  think  is  less  favorable  than  it  was  twenty 
years  ago.  Why  should  it  not  investigate,  determine  and 
develop  the  causes  of  this  ?  Why  not  consider  the  practi 
cability  of  securing  Work  and  Homes  to  all  willing  to  work 
for  them  ?  Can  we  imagine  that  improvement  is  to  come 
without  effort  or  even  inquiry  ?  Is  it  the  order  of  Nature  or 
of  Providence  that  it  should  ?  Do  blessings  come  to  other 
classes  without  foresight  or  calculation?  I  have  heard 
complaints  that  Machinery  and  Invention  do  not  work  for 
the  Laboring  Class,  but  rather  against  them.  Concede  the 
assumption,  and  is  not  the  inquiry  a  fair  one,  What  has  the 
Laboring  Class  ever  done  to  make  Machinery  work  in  its 
favor?  When  has  it  planned,  or  sought,  or  calculated,  to 
render  Machinery  its  ally  and  aid  rather  than  its  enemy  and 
oppressor  ? 

I  am  here  to-night  to  tell  you  that  you,  and  our  Trade, 
and  the  Laboring  Class  of  our  City  have  been  glaringly,  un 
faithful  in  this  respect  to  yourselves,  your  posterity,  and  your 
Race,  and  that  the  Workers  of  Paris,  for  example,  are  in 
advance  of  their  brethren  here  in  knowledge  of  and  devotion 
to  the  interests  and  rights  of  Labor.  And  I  am  here  not  to 
find  fault  merely,  but  to  exhort  you  to  awake  from  your 
apathy  and  heed  the  summons. of  Duty. 

I  stand  here,  friends,  to  urge  that  a  new  leaf  be  now 


THE  UNION  OF  WORKERS.  341 

turned  over  —  that  the  Laboring  Class,  instead  of  idly  and 
blindly  waiting  for  better  circumstances  and  better  times, 
shall  begin  at  once  to  consider  and  discuss  the  means  of 
controlling  circumstances  and  commanding  times,  by  study, 
calculation,  foresight,  union.  We  have  heard  to-night  of  a 
Union  of  Printers  and  a  Printers'  Library,  for  which  latter 
one  generous  donation  has  been  proffered.  I  have  little  faith 
in  giving  as  a  remedy  for  the  woes  of  mankind,  and  not 
much  in  any  effort  for  the  elevation  or  improvement  of  any 
one  section  of  Producers  of  Wealth  in  our  City.  What  I 
would  suggest  would  be  the  Union  and  Organization  of  all 
Workers  for  their  mutual  improvement  and  benefit,  leading 
to  the  erection  of  a  spacious  edifice  at  some  central  point  in 
our  City  to  form  a  LABORERS'  EXCHANGE,  just  as  Commerce 
now  has  its  Exchange,  very  properly.  Let  the  new 
Exchange  be  erected  and  owned  as  a  joint-stock  property, 
paying  a  fair  dividend  to  those  whose  money  erected  it ;  let 
it  contain  the  best  spacious  Hall  for  General  Meetings  to  be 
found  in  our  City,  with  smaller  Lecture-Rooms  for  the 
meetings  of  particular  sections  or  callings  —  all  to  be  leased 
or  rented  at  fair  prices  to  all  who  may  choose  to  hire  them, 
when  not  needed  for  the  primary  purpose  of  discussing  and 
advancing  the  interests  of  Labor.  Let  us  have  here  books 
opened,  wherein  any  one  wanting  work  may  inscribe  his 
name,  residence,  capacities,  and  terms,  while  any  one  wishing 
to  hire  may  do  likewise,  as  well  as  meet  personally  those 
seeking  employment.  These  are  but  hints  toward  a  few  of 
the  uses  which  such  a  Labor  Exchange  might  subserve, 
while  its  Reading-Room  and  Library,  easily  formed  and  re 
plenished,  should  be  open  freely  and  gladly  to  all.  Such  an 
edifice,  rightly  planned  and  constructed,  might  become,  and 
I  confidently  hope  would  become,  a  most  important  instru 
mentality  in  the  great  work  of  advancing  the  Laboring  Class  in 
comfort,  intelligence,  and  independence.  I  trust  we  need  not 
long  await  its  erection. 
29* 


342  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 


THE  TRADE  REFORM. 

ALL  great  changes  proceed  slowly,  and  if  any  seem  to  be 
sudden,  it  is  because  the  real  change  had  long  been  going 
on  unnoticed,  and  that  which  is  mistaken  for  it  is  only  the 
disclosure  or  discovery.  You  will  only  hear  from  the  vulgar 
and  shallow  that  repeated  attempts  at  renovation  have  failed 
or  broken  down,  until  at  last  the  ignorant  and  credulous  are 
astounded  by  the  admission  that  what  they  have  so  often  been 
told  had  exploded  has  actually  triumphed  !  Even  now  they 
will  not  comprehend  that  what  they  have  been  taught  to 
consider  failures  was  but  the  necessary  foundation  of  what 
they  must  now  admit  is  success — that  the  latter  is  but  the 
complement  and  fruition  of  the  former.  They  admit  the 
particular  fact,  but  shut  their  eyes  to  the  general  principle, 
and  the  very  next  reform  that  is  commenced  finds  them  as 
blind  and  shallow  as  ever. 

There  is  to  be,  there  must  be,  a  great  reform  in  the  mode 
and  means  of  effecting  exchanges  of  products  between  pro 
ducers  and  consumers  generally.  The  average  cost  of  such 
exchanges  is  absurdly  higher  than  it  need  be  and  will  be. 
There  are  certain  marked  exceptions  to  this  general  state 
ment —  one  of  them  in  the  case  of  cotton.  The  manufac 
turer,  whether  in  Old  or  New  England,  in  France  or  Pitts- 
burg,  regularly  buys  his  stock  of  cotton  for  seldom  more  and 
often  less  than  the  grower's  price  with  the  usual  charges  for 
brokerage  and  transportation.  The  same  is  the  case  with  a 
few  other  great  staples  which  are  mainly  bought  and  sold  in 
large  quantities,  and  which  suffer  little  injury  from  time  or 
change  of  climate.  But  with  regard  to  the  great  majority 
of  vendibles  the  fact  is  gloomily  otherwise.  There  are  very 
many  articles  which  cost  large  classes  of  consumers  three  to 


THE  TRADE  REFORM.  343 

six  times  what  the  producers  receive  for  them  ;  while  on 
more  than  half  the  goods  sold  in  the  world  there  is  an  ad 
vance  of  twenty-five  to  fifty  per  cent,  above  what  they  need 
cost  the  consumer.  This  advance  is  a  tax  on  productive 
labor  which  can  not  long  abide  the  neighborhood  of  common 
schools,  cheap  newspapers,  and  electric  telegraphs.  It  must 
come  down. 

Do  you  ask  why  the  rate  of  mercantile  profit  is  too  high  ? 
Count  the  number  of  stores  in  any  county,  and  you  have  a 
ready  answer.  There  are  five  to  ten  times  as  many  persons 
employed  in  and  subsisting  by  trade  as  there  need  or  should 
be.  As  the  taxes  of  a  nation  must  be  in  proportion  to  the 
number  and  salaries  of  those  quartered  on  its  treasury,  so  the 
profits  of  trade  must  be  graduated  by  the  number  they  are 
required  to  support.  If  twenty  mercantile  establishments 
are  kept  up  where  three  would  be  abundant,  the  average  ad 
vance  on  the  cost  of  the  goods  must  be  three  or  four  times 
what  it  should  be.  Of  course,  we  do  not  forget  the  use  of 
competition  in  counteracting  selfish  rapacity,  but  there  are 
ways  of  attaining  the  good  here  contemplated  far  more 
cheaply  than  by  employing  twenty  men  to  do  the  work  which 
three  could  do  better. 

We  shall  have  an  end  of  this.  The  diversification  of  in 
dustrial  pursuits  will  do  much  to  promote  it.  As  a  general 
rule,  the  profit  charged  on  any  article  to  the  consumer  is 
proportioned  to  the  distance  from  the  point  of  production. 
A  fabric  which  the  manufacturer  will  gladly  sell  to  the  peo 
ple  of  his  own  county  for  five  per  cent,  on  its  cost,  and 
think  he  is  doing  well,  will  sell  a  thousand  miles  away  at 
twenty  per  cent.,  and  across  a  continent  at  fifty  or  even  a 
hundred.  When  the  nations  of  the  earth  shall  have  become 
wise  enough  to  purchase  freely  of  each  other  such  raw  ma 
terials  as  the  nature  of  their  soil  or  climate  forbids  them  re 
spectively  to  produce,  each  fabricating  and  commingling  for 


344  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

itself,  the  aggregate  tax  levied  on  labor  by  traffic  will  be  im 
mensely  diminished.  But  that  is  a  work  of  time. 

The  more  immediate  instrumentalities  through  which  a 
reduction  of  this  tax  is  to  be  effected  are,  as  briefly  as  may 
be  stated,  the  substitution  of  Cash  payment  for  Credit  as  the 
common  law  of  mercantile  transactions,  and  an  immense  and 
systematic  extension  of  Advertising.  And  though  on  these 
heads  I  have  little  to  offer  that  is  novel,  I  would  earnestly 
commend  them  to  public  attention. 

Credit,  I  need  hardly  affirm,  is  an  excellent,  an  indis 
pensable  thing,  but  grossly  abused,  as  excellent  things  are 
apt  to  be.  It  ought  to  be  based  on  substantial  security. 
We  give  credit  to  a  bank-note  which  we  know  to  be  based 
upon  and  secured  by  a  deposit  of  state  stocks  in  the  public 
coffers  of  our  state ;  we  give  credit  to  the  man  who  proffers 
a  pledge  of  undoubted  property  for  the  punctual  payment 
of  his  debt ;  we  give  credit  to  the  man  we  thoroughly  know 
as  a  man  of  integrity  and  pecuniary  ability.  So  far  all  is 
legitimate,  though  it  should  still  appear  that  the  person  giv 
ing  credit  is  thoroughly  able  so  to  do.  Credit  should  be 
given  because  the  creditor  is  able  and  willing  to  intrust  some 
share  of  his  means  to  the  less  fortunate  debtor,  and  not 
merely  because  the  former  is  a  seller  and  the  latter  a  buyer. 
Selling  and  giving  credit  are  two  entirely  distinct  operations, 
and  one  should  never  suppose  nor  involve  the  other. 

But  the  existing  system  of  mercantile  credit  is  as  loose 
and  vicious  as  it  could  be  and  not  lead  directly  to  general 
ruin.  Our  importers  buy  in  Europe  on  credit ;  our  manu 
facturers  are  too  often  constrained  to  sell  through  commis 
sion-houses  on  credit — not  because  they  desire  or  are  really 
able  to  give  it,  but  because  such  is  the  course  of  trade,  and 
they  must  conform  to  it  or  not  sell  at  all,  except  at  a  ruinous 
sacrifice.  The  jobber,  of  course,  jobs  on  credit,  and  when 
his  payments  crowd  him  he  is  forced  to  credit  not  less,  but 
more  ;  for  his  stock  in  store  will  not  pay  his  notes,  but  when 


THE  TRADE  REFORM.  345 

turned  into  retailers'  paper,  though  not  absolutely  known  to 
be  good,  it  can,  well  indorsed,  be  ground  into  cash.     It  is 
no  mystery,  therefore,  that  a  failing  house  has  lots  of  bad 
paper  among  its  assets ;  it  is  as  natural  as  life.     It  has  been 
making  sales  to  keep  the  mill  going,  and  could  not  stop  to 
be  nice.     Thus  green  country  youth,  not  worth  a  thousand 
dollars  in  the  world,  but  backed  up  by  such  letters  as  most 
people  will  write  or  sign  without  much  consideration  or  con 
science,  can  come  here  and  get  in  debt  for  five  thousand 
dollars'  worth  of  goods,  when  they  have  no  legitimate  claim 
to  credit  for  one-fourth  the  amount.     These  they  go  back  to 
retail,  nine-tenths  on  credit,  to  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry,  at 
glorious   prices,   but  with   dubious   prospects   of  payment. 
The  notes  fall  due  all  around  ;  payment  is  demanded ;  a 
part  of  the  retailer's  customers  have  paid  in  work  on  his 
new  store,  or  in  provisions,  furniture,  or  fuel,  for  his  family  ; 
a  few  pay  punctually,  their  goods  costing  them  twenty  to 
forty  per  cent,  more  than  they  need  if  there  were  no  such 
thing  as  mercantile  credit ;  others  pay  at  the  end  of  an  exe 
cution,  and  of  course  pay  nearer  a  hundred  per  cent,  more 
than  the  cash  value;  many  have  started  for  "the  west,"  or 
have  no  tangible  property,  and  never  pay.     Finally,  but  not 
when  due,  the  retailer  pays  twenty  to  fifty  per  cent,  of  his 
debt,  compromises  with  his  creditors,  and  is  ready  to  begin 
again.     The  jobber  pays  the  importer  and  the  commission- 
house  if  he  can.     The  upshot  is,  that  the  goods  are  not  half 
paid  for — but  those  who  paid  at  all  have  paid  far  too  much. 
The  whole  transaction  has  been  an  encouragement  to  knave 
ry,  improvidence,  and  over-trading ;  for,  if  there  were  no 
system  of  mercantile  credit,  not  half  those  now  engaged  in 
trade  could  pretend  to  be  in  it  at  all.     They  could  not  buy 
a  decent  stock  of  goods  if  obliged  to  pay  for  them  ;  and  a 
system  of  cash  sales  would  speedily  reduce  profits  so  that  a 
petty  business  would  not  be  worth  doing.     The  mere  sim 
plification  of  business  consequent  on  the  disuse  of  credit  in 


346  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

trade,  would  save  half  the  time  and  talent  now  absorbed  in 
mercantile  pursuits.  The  selling  of  one  hundred  thousand 
dollars'  worth  of  goods  in  a  county,  by  two  or  three  es 
tablishments,  entirely  for  ready  pay,  need  not  engross  the 
time  of  ten  persons  in  all ;  while  selling  the  same  goods 
through  ten  or  fifteen  concerns,  with  the  usual  paraphernalia 
of  daybook,  ledger,  note-book,  &c.,  winding  up  with  the  in 
terposition  of  lawyers,  sheriff,  county  court,  &c.,  will  keep 
at  least  fifty  employed  the  year  round. 

I  have  remarked  that  extensive  advertising  is  one  of 
the  means  by  which  the  reform  in  trade  is  to  be  accom 
plished.  The  two  classes,  buyers  and  sellers,  have  a  com 
mon  interest  in  finding  each  other :  that  is  to  say,  it  is  the 
interest  of  him  who  can  supply  a  certain  want  cheapest,  to 
have  every  buyer  aware  of  the  fact ;  and  it  is  the  interest  of 
the  buyers  no  less.  An  expenditure  of  fifty  dollars  may  be 
too  much,  one  of  five  thousand  may  be  too  little,  for  that 
purpose.  If,  for  example,  somebody  has  discovered  —  as 
I  see  stated  in  a  southern  paper — a  substance,  or  chemical 
compound,  which  will  dispense  with  the  labor  now  required 
in  washing  clothes,  or  the  half  of  it,  at  a  very  small  cost,  the 
owners  of  his  patent  may  spend  fifty  thousand  dollars  a-year 
in  advertising  it,  and  then  not  spend  enough.  There  are 
inventions  within  my  knowledge  worth  hundreds  of  thou 
sands,  if  the  patentees  knew  how,  and  had  the  enterprise,  to 
bring  them  home  to  the  knowledge  of  all  interested ;  these 
failing,  they  will  never  realize  twenty  thousand.  Whoever 
can  supply  this  city  cheapest  with  almost  any  article  in  gen 
eral  use,  or  can  cheaply  furnish  an  article  which  will  meet  a 
general  want  hitherto  more  expensively  met,  can  not  adver 
tise  too  much  if  he  knows  how  to  advertise  at  all.  And  yet 
many  a  dealer  in  our'  city  pays  a  thousand  dollars  more  for 
an  eligibly  located  store  than  he  need  pay  in  a  less  frequented 
street,  and  does  not  pay  a  hundred  dollars  a-year  for  adver 
tising  !  He  willingly  pays  a  thousand  dollars  merely  to  let 


THE  REFORM  IN  TRADE.  347 

some  ten  thousand  people  know  that  he  has  certain  articles 
to  sell,  but  grudges  five  hundred  dollars  as  the  cost  of  ex 
tending  the  same  knowledge  to  millions  ! 

This  can  not,  in  the  nature  of  things,  long  endure.  It  is 
simply  a  blind  following  of  old  rules  and  habits,  after  they  have 
become  utterly  inapplicable.  The  time  was  when  the  circu 
lation  of  the  most  popular  journal  was  counted  by  hundreds, 
and  an  advertisement  in  its  columns  was  about  equivalent  in 
publicity  to  a  handbill  on  a  blacksmith's  shop.  It  is  different 
now,  and  there  are  men  in  trade  who  understand  the  differ 
ence  and  profit  by  it.  Many  pay  thousands  a-year  for  ad 
vertising,  and  the  number  is  yearly  increasing.  There  will 
be  hundreds  where  there  are  now  tens  within  five  years. 

Fools  can  be  fools  in  this  as  in  anything  else.  He  who 
keeps  a  corner  grocery,  and  does  not  look  for  customers  be 
yond  the  four  blocks  around  him,  need  not  advertise  —  it 
would  only  be  throwing  away  his  money.  So  of  many 
others.  But  he  who  has  a  cargo  of  fresh  tropical  fruits  to 
day,  which  he  must  speedily  sell  or  see  spoil  on  his  hands, 
can  not  too  quickly  make  known  the  fact  to  every  purchaser 
within  five  hundred  miles :  so  of  many  others.  Whenever 
the  difference  in  cost  or  quality  is  worth  looking  after,  then 
it  is  an  immense  economy  of  cost  and  labor  to  let  the  fact  be 
known  at  once  and  as  widely  as  possible.  Extensive  adver 
tising  of  itself  is  morally  certain  to  work  a  revolution  in 
trade,  by  driving  thousands  of  the  easy-going  out  of  it,  and 
concentrating  business  in  the  hands  of  the  few  who  know 
how  to  obtain  and  keep  it.  Unite  with  this  the  substitution 
of  cash  for  credit,  and  one-fifth  of  those  now  engaged  in 
trade  will  amply  suffice  to  do  the  whole  —  and  will  soon 
have  it  to  do.  The  revolution  is  already  begun. 


348  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 


WHAT  FREE  TRADE  IS  DOING. 

"  You  ought  to  go  to  England,"  said  a  mercantile  friend 
lately  from  Europe  the  other  day,  "  to  see  how  triumphant 
is  the  success  of  the  Free  Trade  Policy  there." 

1  Indeed  !  is  it?  —  I  had  not  heard  that  the  British  Poor- 
Rates  had  fallen  off  materially.  Is  the  Labor  of  England 
better  paid  and  subsisted  than  it  was  ten  years  ago  ?  If  it 
is,  the  fact  is  new  to  me.' 

My  friend  could  not  say  that  Labor  was  higher  or  Paupers 
fewer  in  Great  Britain  under  what  is  called  Free  Trade 
than  they  had  been  previously.  Indeed,  the  condition  of 
Labor  and  the  extension  or  diminution  of  Pauperism  did  not 
seem  to  have  specially  engaged  his  attention  abroad.  But 
he  had  seen  Commerce  active,  Business  prosperous,  Lon 
don  swelling  on  every  side,  Liverpool  extending  its  borders, 
Manchester  and  Leeds  increasing  their  looms  and  mills,  and 
capitalists  plethoric  and  satisfied.  They  told  him  that  Eng 
land  was  flourishing  under  her  present  policy,  and  he  joy 
fully  believed  it.  Had  he  gone  into  the  workshops  and 
dwellings  of  the  Laboring  Poor — of  the  spinners,  weavers, 
tailors,  shoemakers,  hatters,  stevedores,  &c.  —  and  inquired  as 
to  the  condition  and  wages  of  the  millions  who  just  manage 
to  exist  there,  he  would  have  learned  that  those  millions 
were  never  more  scantily  paid,  more  meagerly  fed,  nor 
more  utterly  wretched  and  hopeless  than  they  are  in  this 
year  of  grace  1850.  If  the  blessings  of  Free  Trade  have 
been  realized  around  the  London  Docks  and  the  Welsh 
iron-mines,  in  the  mills  of  the  Cobdens  and  the  banks  of  the 
Barings,  they  have  never  yet  traveled  down  to  the  shops  of 
the  toiling  and  the  cottages  of  the  humble. 


WHAT  FREE  TRADE  IS  DOING.  349 

But  this  is  not  the  whole  truth  that  demands  consider 
ation. 

I  bear  no  ill  will  to  England.  She  is  in  part  the  land  of 
my  ancestry.  She  has  produced  many  great  and  noble 
men,  to  whom  the  world  is  deeply  indebted.  Among  the 
predominant  characteristics  of  her  People  are  many  which 
challenge  admiration  —  patient  courage,  fortitude  under  ad 
versity,  laborious  energy,  and  love  of  home  and  kindred.  I 
as  warmly  desire  the  well-being  of  her  people  as  of  any  other 
except  our  own,  and  yet — say  rather,  because  of  this  —  I 
desire  and  hope  for  the  downfall  of  that  Commercial  and 
Manufacturing  supremacy  which  she  now  enjoys.  I  believe 
such  an  ascendency  by  any  one  nation  over  others,  is  based 
on  and  compels  the  depression  of  Labor  and  the  degradation 
of  Man.  So  long  as  the  whole  world  shall  be  laid  under 
contribution  to  gild  the  palaces  and  expand  the  cities  of 
Great  Britain  —  so  long  as  the  Cotton,  Wheat,  Wool,  Meat, 
and  other  staples  of  all  nations  are  collected  in  the  London 
and  Liverpool  docks  to  be  fabricated  and  consumed  by 
British  skill  and  industry,  and  their  product  re-distributed 
over  the  whole  face  of  the  earth,  just  so  long  must  Labor 
everywhere  be  depressed  and  plundered.  The  wrong  is  in 
the  system,  and  can  not  be  averted  by  any  modification  of  it. 
The  British  manufacturer  may  well  say  to  his  workers.  '  I 
*  must  have  your  services  for  a  shilling  or  so  per  day ;  for 
1  how  else  can  I  pay  the  cost  of  bringing  hither  the  Cotton 
'  of  Alabama,  the  Pork  of  Ohio  and  the  Wheat  of  Illinois, 
4  and  make  my  fabrics  so  cheap  that  they  may  undersell 
'  and  drive  out  the  rival  American  fabrics  from  the  market 
'  of  their  own  country  V  Then  the  American  manufacturer 
turns  round  upon  his  workers,  and  says,  "  I  can't  sell  my 
'  goods  except  at  a  loss,  for  the  British  fabrics  are  cheaper  ; 
'  I  must  have  labor  cheaper  or  shut  up  my  works  :  say 
'which  it  shall  be?"  —  and  they,  clinging  to  their  homes 
and  an  assured  though  meager  subsistence,  say,  "  Cut  us 
30 


350  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

c  down  ten  per  cent  if  you  must ;  we  will  try  to  live  under 
'  the  reduction."  So  down  go  the  wages,  and  Yankee  cloth 
is  cheapened  ;  but  British  capital  gives  the  screw  another 
wrench,  and  gets  its  labor  still  cheaper  and  consequently  its 
cloth  also ;  and  there  is  a  chance  for  our  operatives  to  try 
another  stage  on  the  road  to  famine,  and  so  on.  The  na 
tural,  inevitable  tendency  of  this  struggle  of  British  Manu 
facturers  to  permeate  and  monopolize  the  markets  of  the 
world  is  to  aggrandize  Speculation  and  useless  Traffic  with 
the  sweat  and  blood  of  helpless,  undefended  Toil.  Labor 
is  everywhere  driven  by  it  to  bid  against  itself — is  driven 
to  engage  in  a  cannibal  warfare  whereof  the  only  issue  is 
ruin.  If  there  be  for  it  a  season  of  seeming  prosperity  here 
or  there,  the  reaction  is  certain  and  terrible.  Half  the 
recompense  which  Labor  fairly  earns  is  swallowed  up  in  the 
cost  of  taking  its  product  from  one  country  to  undersell  and 
ruin  on  their  own  soil  the  workers  of  another.  And,  bad 
as  the  job  is,  it  is  never  thoroughly  done.  The  moment  the 
labor  of  one  country  or  class  has  been  thus  undermined  and 
crushed,  it  becomes  a  potent  instrument  for  undermining 
and  crushing  the  labor  of  others  —  perhaps  of  those  who 
wrought  its  overthrow.  The  lower  the  Capital  and  Com 
merce  of  any  country  can  depress  its  Labor,  the  greater  is 
their  chance  of  securing  bountiful  gains  —  the  more  thorough 
is  their  command  of  the  markets  of  the  world.  They  can 
hold  up  when  a  business  do  n't  pay,  or  seek  out  some  other 
investment ;  but  Labor  must  delve  on,  even  at  ruinous 
rates  ;  with  it  to  stand  idle  is  to  famish.  And  even  its  vic 
tories  are  defeats ;  for,  as  the  Spitalfields  silk-weaver  told 
Mr.  Mayhew,  "We've  driven  the  French  out  of  the  market 
in  umbrellas  and  parasols ;  but  the  people  are  starving  while 
they're  driving  of  em  •out. ^ 

Earnestly  believing,  therefore,  that  the  gigantic  fabric  of 
modern  Commercial  and  Industrial  Feudalism  whereof  Great 
Britain  is  the  center  and  soul  is  at  deadly  war  with  the  vital 


WHAT  FREE  TRADE  IS  DOING.  351 

interests  of  mankind,  I  do  not  rejoice  in  what  men  of 
business  call  the  prosperity  of  England,  for  I  believe  it  is 
based  on  the  robbery  of  Labor  at  home  and  results  in  its 
depression  and  derangement  abroad.  I  do  not  rejoice  that 
Manchester  builds  new  factories  and  London  excavates  new 
docks,  for  I  see  in  these  new  instruments  for  the  colonial 
subjugation  and  industrial  depression  of  the  rest  of  the 
world.  Profoundly  convinced  that  it  is  best  for  the  Toiling 
Millions  of  all  nations,  Great  Britain  included,  that  each 
country  should  learn  to  spin  and  weave,  to  roll  and  hammer 
for  itself,  I  regret  any  evidence  afforded  us  that  the  retrograde 
policy  anywhere  gains  ground.  I  would  not  regret  that  British 
Manufactures  are  expanding,  British  Commerce  flourishing, 
British  Revenue  redundant,  did  I  not  feel  that  these  are  but 
links  in  the  chain  which  holds  Portugal  in  virtual  vassalage, 
renders  Brazil  in  effect  a  British  colony,  and  leaves  our  own 
vast,  fertile  and  energetic  country  in  her  blindness  to  grind  corn 
like  Samson  in  the  house  of  the  Philistines.  She  ought  to 
be  out  of  debt,  independent  in  her  circumstances,  with  her 
labor  fully  employed  and  justly  rewarded ;  yet  tens  of  thou 
sands  of  her  people  to-day  vainly  beg  employment  in  her 
streets  and  villages,  while,  in  the  midst  of  peace  and  boun 
teous  harvests,  she  is  silently  incurring  a  Foreign  Debt  of 
many  millions  per  annum  in  the  shape  of  Government  and 
State  Stocks,  Railroad  Bonds  (for  Iron  that  our  workers 
would  gladly  make,  and  suffer  for  want  of  opportunity  to 
make,)  and  other  Stocks,  Bonds  and  Commercial  balances 
generally.  Why  should  we  run  in  debt  for  the  fruits  of  other 
nations'  labor,  while  a  superabundance  of  our  own  labor  is 
left  unemployed  and  famishing?  —  No,  I  do  not  rejoice  in 
what  is  regarded  as  British  prosperity  ;  for  I  believe  it  is  the 
upholding  and  apparent  triumph  of  a  system  whose  downfall 
is  necessary  to  the  emancipation  and  elevation  of  Labor 
throughout  the  world. 


352  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 


SLAVERY  AT  HOME  : 

ANSWER   TO   AN   INVITATION   TO   ATTEND   AN   ANTI-SLAVERY  MEETING. 

NEW- YORK,  June  3,  1845. 

Dear  Sir: — I  received,  weeks  since,  your  letter  inviting 
me  to  be  present  at  a  general  convention  of  opponents  of 
Human  Slavery,  irrespective  of  past  differences  and  party 
organizations.  I  have  delayed  to  the  last  moment  my 
answer,  hoping  I  might  this  season  indulge  a  long-cherished 
desire  and  purpose  by  visiting  your  section  and  city,  in 
which  case  I  should  certainly  have  attended  your  Convention. 
Being  now  reluctantly  compelled  to  forego  or  indefinitely 
postpone  that  visit,  I  have  no  recourse  but  to  acknowledge 
your  courtesy  in  a  letter. 

In  saying  that  I  should  have  attended  your  Convention 
had  I  been  able  to  visit  Cincinnati  this  month,  I  would  by 
no  means  be  understood  as  implying  that  I  should  have 
chosen  to  share  in  its  deliberations ;  still  less  that  I  should 
have  been  likely  to  unite  in  the  course  of  action  to  which 
those  deliberations  will  probably  tend.  Whether  there  '  can 
true  reconcilement  grow'  between  those  opponents  of  Slavery 
whom  the  late  Presidential  Election  arrayed  against  each 
other  in  desperate  conflict,  I  do  not  venture  to  predict.  Most 
surely,  that  large  portion  of  them  with  whom  /  acted  and 
still  act,  have  been  confirmed  in  our  previous  convictions  of 
duty  by  the  result  of  that  election,  and  by  the  momentous  con 
sequences  which  it  has  drawn  after  it,  not  merely  with  regard 
to  this  question  of  Slavery,  but  to  all  questions,  I  have  by 
that  result  been  warned  against  pledging  myself  to  any 
special  and  isolated  Reform  in  such  manner  as  to  interfere 
with  and  fetter  my  freedom  and  ability  to  act  decisively 
and  effectively  upon  more  general  and  immediately  practical 


SLAVERY  AT  HOME.  353 

considerations  of  National  interest  and  of  Human  well- 
being.  You  and  yours,  I  understand,  have  been  confirmed 
in  an  opposite  conviction.  Time  must  decide  on  which  side 
is  the  right. 

But,  while  I  can  not  hope  that  I  should  have  been  able  to 
unite  with  you  upon  any  definitive  course  of  action  to  be 
henceforth  pursued  by  all  opponents  of  Slavery,  irrespective 
of  past  or  present  differences,  I  should  have  gladly  met  you, 
conferred  with  you,  compared  opinions,  and  agreed  to  act 
together  so  far  as  joint  action  is  not  forbidden  by  conflicting 
opinions.  Animated  by  this  spirit,  I  shall  venture  to  set 
before  you,  and  ask  the  Convention  to  consider,  some  views 
which  I  deem  essential  as  bearing  on  the  present  con 
dition  and  ultimate  success  of  the  Anti-Slavery  movement. 

What  is  Slavery  ?  You  will  probably  answer,  "  The 
1  legal  subjection  of  one  human  being  to  the  will  and  power 
*  of  another."  But  this  definition  appears  to  me  inaccurate  on 
both  sides  —  too  broad,  and  at  the  same  time  too  narrow. 
It  is  too  broad,  in  that  it  includes  the  subjection  founded 
in  other  necessities  not  less  stringent  than  those  imposed  by 
statute.  We  must  seek  some  truer  definition. 

I  understand  by  Slavery,  that  condition  in  which  one 
human  being  exists  mainly  as  a  convenience  for  other  human 
beings— "in  which  the  time,  the  exertions,  the  faculties  of  a 
part  of  the  Human  Family  are  made  to  subserve,  not  their 
own  development,  physical,  intellectual,  and  moral,  but  the 
comfort,  advantage,  or  caprices  of  others.  In  short,  wher 
ever  service  is  rendered  from  one  human  being  to  another, 
on  a  footing  of  one-sided  and  not  of  mutual  obligation  — 
where  the  relation  between  the  servant  and  the  served  is  one 
not  of  affection  and  reciprocal  good  offices,  but  of  authority, 
social  ascendency  and  power  over  subsistence  on  the  one 
hand,  and  of  necessity,  servility,  and  degradation  on  the 
other — there,  in  my  view,  is  Slavery. 

You  will  readily  understand,  therefore,  that,  if  I  regard 
30* 


354  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

your  enterprise  with  less  absorbing  interest  than  you  do,  it  is 
not  that  I  deem  Slavery  a  less  but  a  greater  evil.  If  I  am 
less  troubled  concerning  the  Slavery  prevalent  in  Charleston 
or  New-Orleans,  it  is  because  I  see  so  much  Slavery  in 
New- York,  which  appears  to  claim  my  first  efforts.  I  rejoice 
in  believing  that  there  is  less  of  it  in  your  several  com 
munities  and  neighborhoods  ;  but  that  it  does  exist  there  I 
am  compelled  to  believe.  In  esteeming  it  my  duty  to  preach 
Reform  first  to  my  own  neighbors  and  kindred,  I  would  by 
no  means  attempt  to  censure  those  whose  consciences  pre 
scribe  a  different  course.  Still  less  would  I  undertake  to  say 
that  the  Slavery  of  the  South  is  not  more  hideous  in  kind 
and  degree  than  that  which  prevails  at  the  North.  The  fact 
that  it  is  more  flagrant  and  palpable  renders  opposition  to  it 
comparatively  easy  and  its  speedy  downfall  certain.  But 
how  can  I  devote  myself  to  a  crusade  against  distant  servi 
tude,  when  I  discern  its  essence  pervading  my  immediate 
community  and  neighborhood?  nay,  when  I  have  not  yet 
succeeded  in  banishing  it  even  from  my  own  humble  house 
hold  ?  Wherever  may  lie  the  sphere  of  duty  of  others,  is 
not  mine  obviously  here  ? 

Let  me  state  what  I  conceive  to  be  the  essential  character 
istics  of  Human  Slavery  : 

1.  Wherever  certain  human  beings  devote  their  time  and 
thoughts  mainly  to  obeying  and  serving  other  human  beings, 
and  this  not  because  they  choose  to  do  so  but  because  they 
must,  there  (I  think)  is  Slavery. 

2.  Wherever  human  beings  exist  in  such  relations  that  a 
part,  because  of  the  position  they  occupy  and  the  functions 
they  perform,  are  generally  considered  an  inferior  class  to 
those  who  perform  other  functions,  or  none,  there  (I  think) 
is  Slavery. 

3.  Wherever  the  ownership  of  the  Soil  is  so  ^grossed  by 
a  small  part  of  the  community  that  the  far  larger  number  are 
compelled  to  pay  whatever  the  few  may  see  fit  to  exact  for 


SLAVERY  AT  HOME.  355 

the  privilege  of  occupying  and  cultivating  the  earth,  there  is 
something  very  like  Slavery. 

4.  Wherever  Opportunity  to  Labor  is  obtained  with  diffi 
culty,  and  is  so  deficient  that  the  Employing  class  may  vir 
tually  prescribe  their  own  terms  and  pay  the  Laborer  only 
such  share  as  they  choose  of  the  product,  there  is  a  very 
strong  tendency  to  Slavery. 

5.  Wherever  it  is  deemed  more  reputable  to  live  without 
Labor  than  by  Labor,  so  that  a  gentleman  would  be  rather 
ashamed  of  his  descent  from  a  blacksmith  than  from  an  idler 
or  mere  pleasure-seeker,  there  is  a  community  not  very  far 
from  Slavery.     And, 

6.  Wherever  one  human  being  deems  it  honorable  and 
right  to  have  other  human  beings  mainly  devoted  to  his  or 
her  convenience  or  comfort,  and  thus  to  live,  diverting  the 
labor  of  these  persons  from  all  productive  or  general  useful 
ness  to  his  or  her  own  special  uses,  while  he  or  she  is  ren 
dering  or  has   rendered   no   corresponding    service  to  the 
cause   of  human  well-being,  there  exists  the   spirit  which 
originated  and  still  sustains  Human  Slavery. 

I  might  multiply  these  illustrations  indefinitely,  but  I 
dare  not  so  trespass  on  your  patience.  Rather  allow  me  to 
apply  the  principles  here  evolved  in  illustration  of  what  I 
deem  the  duties  and  policy  of  Abolitionists  in  reference  to 
their  cause.  And  here  I  would  advise  : 

1.  Oppose  Slavery  in  ALL  its  forms.     Be  at  least  as  care 
ful  not  to  lie  a  slaveholder  as  not  to  vote  for  one.     Be  as 
tenacious   that  your  own  wives,  children,  hired   men   and 
women,  tenants,  &c.,  enjoy  the  blessings  of  rational  Liberty, 
as  that  the  slaves  of  South  Carolina  do. 

2.  Be  at  least  as  ardent  in  opposing  the  NEAR  as  the 
DISTANT  forms  of   Oppression.  —  It  was  by  beginning    at 
home  that  Chanty  was  enabled  to  perform  such  long  jour 
neys,  even  before  the  construction  of  railroads.     And  it  does 
seem  clear  to  my  mind  that  if  the  advocates  of  Emancipa- 


356  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

tion  would  unite  in  well-directed,  persistent  efforts  to  im 
prove  the  condition  of  the  Colored  Race  in  their  own  States 
and  neighborhoods  respectively,  they  could  hardly  fail  to  ad 
vance  their  cause  more  rapidly  and  surely  than  by  any  other 
course.  Suppose,  for  example,  they  were  to  resolve  in 
each  State  to  devote  their  political  energies  in  the  first  place 
to  a  removal  of  the  shameful,  atrocious  civil  disabilities  and 
degradations  under  which  the  African  Race  now  generally 
labor,  and  to  this  end  were  to  vote  systematically  for  such 
candidates,  whom  their  votes  could  probably  elect,  (if  such 
there  were,)  as  were  known  to  favor  the  removal  of  those 
disabilities  :  Would  not  their  success  be  sure  and  speedy  ? 
But, 

3.  Look  well  to  the  Moral  and  Social  condition  of  the 
'Blacks  in  the  Free,  States.  Here  is  the  refuge  of  the  con 
scientious  slaveholder.  He  declines  emancipating,  because 
he  can  not  perceive  that  emancipation  has  thus  far  conduced 
to  the  benefit  of  the  liberated.  If  the  mass  of  the  Blacks 
are  to  remain  ignorant,  destitute,  unprincipled,  degraded  (as 
he  is  told  the  Free  Blacks  are)  he  thinks  it  better  that  his 
should  remain  Slaves. 

I  know  that  the  degradation  of  the  Blacks  is  exaggerated. 
I  know  that  so  much  of  it  as  exists  is  mainly  owing  to  their 
past  and  present  wrongs.  But  I  feel  also  that  the  process 
of  overcoming  this  debasement  must  be  slow  and  dubious, 
while  its  causes  continue  to  exist.  I  entreat,  therefore,  that 
those  who  have  the  ear  of  these  children  of  Africa  and  of 
their  philanthropic  friends,  shall  consider  the  propriety  of 
providing  for  them  cities  of  refuge,  townships — communi 
ties,  I  would  say — wherein  they  may  dwell  apart  from  the 
mass  of  our  people,  in  a  social  atmosphere  of  their  own,  not 
poisoned  by  the  universal  conviction  of  their  inferiority,  at 
least  until  they  shall  have  had  a  chance  to  show  whether  they 
are  or  are  not  necessarily  idle,  thriftless,  vicious  and  content 
with  degradation.  I  most  earnestly  believe  the  popular  as- 


TOBACCO.  357 

sumptions  on  these  points  erroneous ;  I  ask  that  the  Blacks 
have  a  fair  chance  to  prove  them  so.  A  single  township  in 
each  Free  State  mainly  peopled  by  them,  with  churches, 
schools,  seminaries  for  scientific  and  classical  education,  and 
all  Social  influences  untainted  by  the  sense  of  African  hu 
miliation,  would  do  more  (if  successful,  as  I  doubt  not  it 
would  be)  to  pa/e  the  way  for  Universal  Freedom,  than 
reams  of  angry  vituperation  against  slaveholders.  These 
are  in  good  part  men  of  integrity  and  conscience ;  they  see 
the  wrong  almost  as  clearly  as  you  do ;  it  is  the  right  which 
they  should  see  and  can  not ;  will  you  enable  them  to  see  it  ? 
Yours  respectfully,  HORACE  GREELEY. 


TOBACCO. 

LETTER    TO   MESSRS.   O.    S.    &    L.    N.    FOWLER. 

Gentlemen  : — You  ask  me  for  a  statement  of  what  I  know 
and  think  respecting  tobacco.  I  have  had  a  good  deal  of 
experience  on  this  subject ;  in  fact,  I  once  smoked  nearly  an 
inch  of  cigar  myself.  It  served  me  right,  and  I  have  never 
since  had  an  inclination  to  outrage  human  nature  and  insult 

O 

decency  in  any  such  way.  I  was  then  some  six  years  old, 
and  naturally  aspiring  to  the  accomplishments  of  manhood 
and  gentility ;  but  the  lesson  I  then  received  will  suffice  for 
my  whole  life,  though  it  should  be  spun  out  to  the  length  of 
Methuselah's.  I  have  since  endured  my  share  of  the  fumi 
gations  and  kindred  abominations  of  tobacco,  but  I  have 
inflicted  none. 

I  wish  some  budding  Elia,  not  a  slave  to  narcotic  sensual 
ism,  would  favor  us  with  an  essay  on  "  The  Natural  Affini 
ties  of  Tobacco  with  Blackguardism."  The  materials  for  it 
are  abundant,  and  you  have  but  to  open  your  eyes  (or  nos 
trils)  in  any  city  promenade,  (glorious  Boston  excepted,)  in 


358  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

any  village  bar-room,  to  find  yourself  confronted  by  them. 
Is  Broadway  sunny  yet  airy,  with  the  atmosphere  genial  and 
inviting,  so  that  fair  maidens  (and  eke  observing  bachelors) 
throng  the  two-shilling  sidewalk,  glad  to  enjoy  and  not  un 
willing  to  be  admired  ?  Hither  (as  Satan  into  Paradise,  but 
not  half  so  gentlemanly)  hie  the  host  of  tobacco-smoking 
loafers,  to  puff  their  detested  fumes  into  the  faces  and  eyes 
of  abhorring  purity  and  loveliness,  to  spatter  the  walk,  and 
often  soil  the  costly  and  delicate  dresses  of  the  promenaders 
with  their  vile  expectorations.  And,  even  should  the  smo 
kers  forbear  to  besmear  the  outraged  but  patiently-enduring 
flag-stones  with  their  foul  saliva,  the  chewers  will  not  be  far 
behind  (as  the  Revelator  saw  '  Death  on  the  pale  horse,  and 
Hell  following  after,')  industriously  polluting  the  fair  face  of 
earth,  as  their  precursors  have  poisoned  the  sweet  breath  of 
heaven.  How  long,  oh  !  how  long,  must  all  this  be  suffered  ? 
I  have  intimated  that  the  tobacco-consumer  is  —  not  in 
deed  necessarily  and  inevitably,  but  naturally  and  usually — 
a  blackguard ;  that  chewing  or  smoking  obviously  tends  to 
blackguardism.  Can  any  man  doubt  it?  Let  him  ride 
with  uncorrupted  senses  in  the  stage  or  omnibus,  which  the 
chewer  insists  on  defiling  with  the  liquid  product  of  his  in 
cessant  labors,  seeming  unconscious  of  its  utter  offensive- 
ness  ;  and  which  even  the  smoker,  especially  if  partly  or 
wholly  drunk,  will  also  insist  on  transforming  into  a  minia 
ture  Tophet  by  his  exhalations,  defying  alike  the  express 
rule  of  the  coach  and  the  sufferer's  urgent  remonstrances,  if 
he  can  only  say,  "Why,  there's  no  lady  here."  pNo  ladies* 
is  his  expression,  but  the  plea  is  execrable  enough,  though 
expressed  grammatically.]  Go  into  a  public  gathering, 
where  a  speaker  of  delicate  lungs,  and  an  invincible  repul 
sion  to  tobacco,  is  trying  to  discuss  some  important  topic  so 
that  a  thousand  men  can  hear  and  understand  him,  yet 
whereinto  ten  or  twenty  smokers  have  introduced  themselves, 
a  long-nine  projecting  horizontally  from  beneath  the  nose  of 


COMING  TO  THE  CITY.  35D 

each,  a  fire  at  one  end  and  a  fool  at  the  other,  and  mark  how 
the  puff,  puffing  gradually  transforms  the  atmosphere  (none 
too  pure  at  best)  into  that  of  some  foul  and  pestilential  cav 
ern,  choking  the  utterance  of  the  speaker,  and  distracting  (by 
annoyance)  the  attention  of  the  hearers,  until  the  argument 
is  arrested  or  its  effect  utterly  destroyed.  If  he  who  will 
selfishly,  recklessly,  impudently,  inflict  so  much  discomfort 
and  annoyance  on  many,  in  order  that  he  may  enjoy  in  a 
particular  place  an  indulgence  which  could  as  well  be  en 
joyed  where  no  one  else  would  be  affected  by  it,  be  not  a 
blackguard,  who  can  be  ?  What  could  indicate  bad  breed 
ing  and  a  bad  heart,  if  such  conduct  does  not?  "Breth 
ren  !"  said  Parson  Strong,  of  Hartford,  preaching  a  Con 
necticut  election  sermon,  in  high  party  times,  some  fifty 
years  ago,  "it  has  been  charged  that  I  have  said  every 
Democrat  is  a  horse-thief:  I  never  did.  What  I  did  say 
was  only  that  every  horse-thief  is  a  Democrat,  and  that  I 
can  prove."  So  I  do  not  say  that  every  smoker  or  chewer 
is  necessarily  a  blackguard,  however  steep  the  proclivity 
that  way;  but  show  me  a  genuine  blackguard  —  one  of  the 
b'hoys,  and  no  mistake — who  is  not  a  lover  of  tobacco  in 
some  shape,  and  I  will  agree  to  find  you  two  white  black- 
,  birds.  HORACE  GREELEY. 


COMING  TO  THE  CITY. 

CITIES  are  the  result  of  certain  social  necessities  of  civil 
ized  or  semi-civilized  Man, — necessities  of  Trade,  of  Manu 
facture,  Interchange  of  Ideas,  and  of  Government :  they 
rest  upon  and  are  supported  by  the  Country.  Their  sup 
port  is  of  course  mainly  voluntary ;  its  amount  is  controlled 
by  the  ability  and  desires  of  the  rural  population.  Thus, 
while  almost  any  farming  County  might  give  employment 
and  ample  subsistence  to  five  or  even  ten  times  its  present 


360  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

population,  there  is  scarcely  a  city  in  the  world  whose  popu 
lation  is  not  already  quite  as  large  as  it  has  business  to 
employ  and  income  to  sustain,  while  the  greater  number  are 
constantly  crowded  with  surplus  laborers,  vainly  seeking 
employment  and  underbidding  each  other  in  the  eager  strife 
for  it,  until  thousands  can  hardly  sustain  life  on  the  scanty 
reward  of  their  exertions,  and  other  thousands  are  forced  to 
live  on  public  or  private  charity.  Many  perish  every  year, 
not  perhaps  of  absolute  starvation,  but  of  diseases  induced 
by  hunger,  want  and  exposure,  while  a  larger  number  are 
driven  by  destitution  into  evil  courses,  and  close  their  brief 
careers  of  guilty  mockery  of  enjoyment  by  deaths  of  shame 
and  horror.  Such  are  some  of  the  dire  consequences  of  the 
continual  over-population  of  our  cities,  caused  by  the  insane 
desire  very  generally  felt  to  escape  the  ruder  toils  and  tamer 
routine  of  country  life.  Until  some  marked  change  shall 
have  been  wrought  in  the  general  condition  of  our  rural  In 
dustry,  so  as  to  render  it  less  repulsive  than  it  now  is,  our 
cities  must  continue  over-crowded  and  full  of  misery.  The 
naked  truth  that,  as  a  general  rule,  no  one  lives  by  bonafide 
physical  labor  who  can  obtain  a  living  without,  and  very 
few  live  by  farming  or  the  like  who  can  live  by  what  are 
esteemed  the  lighter  and  more  genteel  avocations  mainly 
pursued  in  cities  and  villages,  explains  much  of  the  misery 
so  prevalent  all  around  us.  Doubtless,  the  Monopoly  of 
Land  is  one  of  the  ultimate  causes  of  this  deplorable  state 
of  things ;  thousands  annually  quitting  the  country  for  cities 
who  would  cling  to  the  homes  of  their  infancy  if  they  were 
not  the  property  of  others,  and  would  cultivate  soil  like  their 
fathers  if  they  had  any  soil  to  cultivate.  Having  none,  they 
are  tempted  to  seek  in  some  city  the  employment  and  inde 
pendence  which  seem  denied  them  where  they  were  born. 

This  choice  is  almost  always  an  unwise  one.  In  the 
Country,  the  young  man  heartily  willing  to  do  anything  hon 
est  and  useful  for  a  livelihood,  need  seldom  wait  long  for 


COMING  TO  THE   CITY.  361 

employment  that  will  at  least  insure  him  a  subsistence.  In 
the  Cities,  the  case  is  sadly  different.  A  capable,  willing, 
trustworthy  man  may  earnestly  seek  employment  here  for 
months  without  finding  any.  And  the  reason  is  very  clear : 
There  are  more  seeking  work  in  the  cities  than  work  can  be 
found  for ;  and,  though  the  business  of  most  cities  annually 
increases,  through  the  growth  of  the  Country  trading  with 
them,  yet  the  pressure  for  employment  in  cities  constantly 
outruns  the  demand  for  labor,  and  if  New- York  were  to 
increase  its  trade  and  consequently  its  population  by  ten  or 
twenty  per  cent,  a  year  for  the  next  century,  there  would  at 
all  times  be  thousands  waiting  here  for  chances  to  do  some 
thing,  and  many  starved  out  or  impelled  to  evil  courses  for 
want  of  honest  business.  The  gigantic  sea  of  Foreign 
Immigration  incessantly  rolling  in  upon  us,  bringing  thou 
sands  each  month  to  our  City  (some  of  them  most  ingenious, 
expert  and  capable)  who  must  have  work  promptly  or  go  to 
the  Poor-House,  and  who  are  inured  to  lower  wages  and 
poorer  living  than  Americans  will  submit  to,  will  keep  the 
general  Labor  market  glutted  and  the  average  recompense 
of  hired  labor  low  for  a  term  of  which  I  can  not  foresee  the 
end. 

— '  But  do  you  contend  that  no  American  youth  should 
ever  migrate  from  the  country  to  one  of  our  Cities  ?'  No, 
Sir,  I  do  not.  What  I  do  maintain  is  this  —  Whoever  leaves 
the  country  to  come  hither  should  feel  sure  that  he  has  facul 
ties,  capacities,  powers,  for  which  the  Country  affords  him  no 
scope,  and  that  the  City  is  his  proper  sphere  of  usefulness. 
He  should  next  be  sure  that  he  has  ability  to  procure  a  live 
lihood  while  he  shall  be  laboring  to  attain  that  sphere  which 
he  regards  as  his  ultimate  destination.  No  youth  should 
migrate  to  a  City  without  a  thorough  mastery  of  some  good 
mechanical  trade  or  handicraft  such  as  is  prosecuted  in 
cities,  although  he  may  not  intend  to  follow  it  except  in  case 
of  dire  necessity.  Teaching.  Clerking  Law,  &c.  are  so 
'  31 


362  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

very  precarious,  except  to  men  of  established  reputation  and 
business,  that  it  is  next  to  madness  for  a  youth  to  come  here 
relying  upon  them.  With  a  good  trade,  a  hearty  willingness 
to  work,  strict  temperance  and  habits  of  economy,  it  will  be 
hard  to  starve  out  a  man  who  has  once  found  employment ; 
not  so  with  one  who  is  trained  only  for  a  Teacher  or  Clerk, 
or  who  '  is  willing  to  do  anything' — which  means  that  he 
knows  how  to  do  nothing.  With  these,  our  City  always  has 
been,  always  will  be  crowded  —  it  pays  for  burying  the 
greater  part  of  them. 

The  young  man  fit  to  come  to  a  City  does  not  begin  by 
importuning  some  relative  or  friend  to  find  or  make  a  place 
for  him.  Having  first  qualified  himself,  so  far  as  he  may,  for 
usefulness  here,  he  comes  understanding  that  he  must  begin 
at  the  foot  of  the  class  and  work  his  way  up.  Having  found 
a  place  to  stop,  he  makes  himself  acquainted  with  those 
places  where  work  in  his  line  may  be  found,  sees  the  adver 
tisements  of  *  Wants'  in  the  leading  journals  at  an  early  hour 
each  morning,  notes  those  which  hold  out  some  prospect  for 
him,  and  accepts  the  first  place  offered  him  which  he  can 
take  honorably  and  fill  acceptably.  He  who  commences  in 
this  way  is  quite  likely  to  get  on. 

But  for  him  whose  chief  object  is  to  live  comfortably,  or 
even  to  acquire  wealth  by  honest  industry,  the  City  is  not 
the  place.  The  mass  of  men  and  women  work  far  steadier 
and  harder  here  for  a  bare  subsistence  than  they  do  away 
from  the  Cities.  To  say  nothing  of  the  ruder  manual  toil  by 
which  no  man  can  support  a  family  in  comfort,  the  average 
earnings  of  good  mechanics  here  will  not  exceed  eight  dol 
lars  per  week  the  year  round,  or  four  hundred  dollars  per 
annum.  This  will  seem  considerable  to  mechanics  who  can 
hire  a  good  house  and  garden  for  thirty  to  sixty  dollars,  with 
often  a  strip  of  pasture  or  meadow  attached ;  but  let  such 
consider  that  here  almost  any  kind  of  a  house  costs  from 
three  to  five  hundred  dollars  per  annum,  and  the  meanest 


COMING  TO  THE  CITY.  363 

dog-hole  into  which  a  family  can  be  crowded — perhaps  up 
two  flights  of  stairs — will  cost  one  hundred  dollars,  with  like 
charges  for  Fuel,  Milk,  Vegetables,  &c.  and  they  will  under 
stand  the  whole  subject  much  better.  A  good  mechanic  can 
support  his  family  better  by  five  days'  labor  per  week  in  the 
country  than  by  six  in  this  or  almost  any  great  city. 

*  But  men  do  get  rich  in  the  city,'  — Yes,  they  do.  One 
in  a  thousand  of  those  who  come  here  in  quest  of  fortune 
achieve  it,  and  they  are  generally  men  who  would  do  the 
same  anywhere.  Scrutinize  closely  the  lives  of  those  who 
have  made  fortunes  in  cities,  and  you  will  find  that  they  were 
early  risers,  hard  workers,  sharp  dealers,  and  close  calcu 
lators —  a  sort  very  difficult  to  starve.  Having  thus  obtained 
a  good  start  early  in  life,  the  rest  was  easy ;  for  he  must  be 
a  natural-born  fool  or  worse  who  can  not  with  money  and 
credit  accumulate  property  anywhere.  The  problem  we  are 
considering  is,  How  men  are  to  do  who  have  not  money,  or 
at  best  have  very  little. 

I  am  not  forgetting  that  there  are  some  rare  but  showy 
instances  of  men  who  have  made  fortunes  by  some  dashing 
speculation  or  run  of  luck  in  trade  —  but  these  are  too  few 
to  disturb  the  general  calculation.  Whoever  wishes  to  try  his 
luck  at  gambling  is  not  obliged  to  come  to  the  City  for  that 
purpose,  or  at  least  need  not  remove  hither.  Three  days  will 
usually  suffice  for  his  purpose.  —  And,  for  every  large  fortune 
rapidly  acquired  in  Trade  or  Stocks,  fully  forty  small  for 
tunes  (and  some  large  ones)  have  been  lost  in  the  same  way. 
The  mushroom  millionaire  dazzles  all  eyes  by  his  horses 
and  equipage,  his  palace,  and  his  plate  —  he  is  thought  of, 
talked  of — while  those  who  have  lost  everything  by  the  same 
turn  of  the  wheel  crawl  away  to  die  in  some  out-of-the-way 
corner,  silent  and  forgotten. 

—  A  single  class  remains  to  be  spoken  of — that  of  men 
past  their  youth,  who,  often  with  families  dependent  on  them, 
seek  employment  in  cities  because  they  have  not  been  sue- 


364  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

cessful  elsewhere,  and,  without  any  special  faculty,  plunge 
into  some  emporium  of  Commerce  to  earn  in  some  novel 
vocation  the  livelihood  among  strangers  which  they  can  not 
amid  their  friends  at  the  pursuits  to  which  they  are  ac 
customed.  Such  men  are  downright  suicides — if  they  have 
families,  they  are  worse  than  that ;  and  whoever  aids  them 
in  their  mad  folly  is  an  accessory  to  their  crime.  No  man 
should  ever  change  his  vocation  after  thirty  unless  he  has 
hitherto  been  a  pirate,  gambler,  pickpocket,  or  something  of 
the  sort,  and  even  then  he  has  but  a  sorry  prospect  before 
him  ;  but  for  a  poor  unlucky  man  to  bring  a  family  of  chil 
dren  to  a  City  and  hope  there  to  support  them  in  some  novel 
pursuit,  is  the  wildest,  most  desperate  infatuation.  There  is 
no  chance  of  success  —  no  rational  hope  that  he  can  struggle 
on  except  in  the  most  abject  dependence  and  beggary. 

Such  are  some  of  the  reasons  which  impel  me  uniformly 
to  reply  unfavorably  or  not  at  all  to  those  seeking  encourage 
ment  in  their  plans  of  removing  to  the  City.  To  bring 
more  here  is  to  increase  the  prevalence  of  want  and  misery 
among  our  present  redundant  population.  I  might  say 
much  more  on  this  theme,  but  can  it  be  needed  ? 


STRIKES  AND  THEIR  REMEDY. 

THE  recent  Strikes  for  Wages  in  different  parts  of  the 
country,  but  especially  those  of  the  Iron-Puddlers  of  Pitts 
burgh,  suggest  grave  and  yet  hopeful  thoughts.  In  reading 
the  proceedings  of  the  Strikers,  an  observer's  attention  will  be 
arrested  by  their  emphatic  though  unconscious  condemnation 
of  our  entire  Social  framework  as  defective  and  unjust. 
Probably  half  of  these  men  never  harbored  the  idea  of  a 
Social  reconstruction  —  never  even  heard  of  it.  Ask  them 
one  by  one  if  such  an  idea  could  be  made  to  work,  and  they 
would  shake  their  heads  and  say,  *  It  is  all  well  in  theory, 


STRIKES  AND  THEIR  REMEDY.  365 

but  it  will  never  do  in  practice.'  But  when  they  come  to 
differ  with  their  employers,  they  at  once  assume  the  defect- 
iveness  of  our  present  Social  polity,  and  argue  from  it  as  a 
point  by  nobody  disputed  :  "  We  ought  to  be  paid  so  much, 
[thus  runs  their  logic]  because  we  need  and  they  can  afford 
it."  '  Ought,1  do  you  say,  friends?  Don't  you  realize  that 
the  whole  world  around  is  based  upon  must  instead  of  ought? 
Which  one  of  you,  though  earning  fifteen  dollars  per  week, 
ever  paid  five  cents  more  than  the  market  price  for  a  bushel 
of  potatoes,  or  a  basket  of  eggs,  or  a  quarter  of  mutton,  be 
cause  the  seller  ought  to  be  fairly  paid  for  his  labor,  and 
couldn't  really  afford  to  sell  at  the  market  rate?  Nay, 
which  of  you  well-paid  puddlers  ever  gave  a  poor  widow 
a  dollar  a  piece  for  making  your  shirts  when  you  could  get 
them  made  as  well  for  half  a  dollar,  even  though  at  the  dol 
lar  you  would  be  getting  three  days'  work  for  one  ?  Step 
forward  from  the  ranks,  you  gentlemen  that  have  conducted 
your  own  buying  and  hiring  through  life  on  the  principle  of 
*  ought,1  and  let  me  make  my  obeisance  to  each  of  you !  I 
shall  do  it  right  heartily,  and  with  no  fear  of  being  rendered 
neck-weary  by  the  operation. 

Yet  that  '  ought1  is  a  glorious  word  when  applied  to  the 
relations  of  Business  arid  of  Labor — we  must  not  let  it  be 
forgotten.  There  is  in  it  the  seeds  of  a  revolution  more 
gigantic  and  pervasive  than  any  Vergniaud  or  Kossuth  ever 
devised.  Heaven  speed  the  day  when,  not  only  in  Iron  but 
in  all  branches  of  Industry,  the  reward  of  Labor  shall  be 
regulated  not  by  '  must,'  but  by  '  ought.' 

*######## 

The  most  melancholy  feature  of  these  strikes  is  the  ap 
parent  indisposition  on  either  side  to  discover  any  law 
whereby  these  collisions  may  be  terminated  for  the  present 
and  precluded  in  future.  It  seems  so  natural  for  the  work 
men  to  say,  "You  tell  us  that  you  can  pay  but  three- 
fourths  of  our  former  wages  because  of  the  low  price  of  Iron  : 
31* 


366  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

now  suppose  we  accept  your  terms,  will  you  agree  that  our 
wages  shall  advance  whenever  and  so  fast  as  the  price  of  Iron 
shall  improve?"  — '  Yes,'  would  be  the  natural  and  proper 
answer  of  the  masters,  '  if  you  will  agree  that  they  shall  be 
reduced  whenever  and  so  fast  as  Iron  shall  decline  still  fur- 
ther."1  This  being  accepted,  the  entire  relation  of  Capital  to 
Labor  in  this  particular  department  is  readjusted  on  the 
basis  of  Proportion  or  Common  Interest  instead  of  that  of 
arbitrary  Wages,  evolving  contrariety  of  interests.  Now  the 
puddler  gets  so  much,  although  the  Iron  should  not  sell  for 
enough  to  pay  him,  and  cares  very  little  whether  the  busi 
ness  is  prosperous  or  depressed,  save  as  its  suspension  may 
turn  him  out  of  work.  But  with  the  establishment  of  Pro 
portion  as  a  law  of  the  trade,  every  worker's  interests  would 
be  on  the  side  of  prosperity,  and  his  wages  every  week  de 
pend  on  the  price  which  Iron  should  bear  at  the  end  of  it. 

But  from  neither  party  to  this  controversy  do  I  hear 
one  fruitful  or  reconciling  word.  From  the  journeymen's 
side,  we  have  all  manner  of  Jacobinic  clamor  against  the 
oppressions  of  capital,  wealth,  monopoly,  &c.,  but  no  practi 
cal  suggestion  for  their  removal.  No  one  says,  *  Let  us  hire 
Iron-works  [of  which  there  are  abundance  shut  up]  and  go 
to  making  Iron  as  our  own  masters.'  Even  in  Wheeling, 
where  there  has  been  a  great  meeting  of  Iron-workers  to 
sympathise  with  and  encourage  the  Pittsburgh  puddlers,  no 
voice  uttered  the  creative  words,  '  Stop  depending  on  mas 
ters,  and  go  to  making  Iron  for  yourselves  !'  How  is  it  that 
a  course  so  obvious,  so  decisive,  and  now  rescued  from  the 
fatal  taint  of  novelty  by  a  signal  success,  should  remain  un 
adopted  and  even  unconsidered  ? 

NOTE.  —  Since  the  above  was  written  and  published,  the  organization  of  the 
various  branches  of  Iron-making  and  manufacture  on  the  basis  of  Proportion  or  As 
sociation  has  been  earnestly  considered  by  the  workers  of  Pittsburgh,  and  several 
attempts  at  practical  Association  are  now  in  progress  or  in  contemplation  by  them. 


GLIMPSES  OF  A  BETTER  LIFE.  367 


GLIMPSES  OF  A  BETTER  LIFE. 

I  KNOW  that  the  speculations  of  those  who  dream  of  a 
better  framework  of  Society  are  distasteful  to  the  greater 
number  of  readers,  but  shall  we,  therefore,  hold  our  peace  ? 
Shall  we  follow  the  advice  of  our  adversaries,  and  choose  only 
those  opportunities  to  speak  when  they  who  condemn  un 
heard  will  surely  not  be  among  the  number  of  our  auditors  ? 
Shall  we  politely  smother  the  light  under  a  bushel,  lest  its 
piercing  rays  inflame  the  eyes  of  a  long  benighted  and 
wilfully  slumbering  world  ?  So  policy  dictates,  and  the 
World  imperatively  commands.  The  dull,  voluptuous 
World  !  it  demands  flattery  for  its  amazing  charities,  not  re 
buke  for  its  indifference  to  the  wants  and  woes  of  the  Poor ! 
Beauty  in  her  boudoir  will  be  complimented  on  her  generous 
bestowment  of  pence  on  some  famishing  invalid,  and  not 
confronted  with  the  stern,  reproachful  ghosts  of  the  hours 
due  to  Humanity  she  has  wasted  in  Sloth  or  Selfishness  ;  of 
the  coin  lavished  on  dress  or  decoration,  which  might  have 
raised  a  sister  from  despair  to  love  of  life.  Wealth  rocks 
indolently  in  its  easy-chair,  contemplating  its  ample  hoards, 
and  broadly  fertile  domains,  and  laboriously  digesting  its 
dainty  viands,  and  petulantly  asks  if  it  is  never  to  have  a 
moment's  peace  from  the  importunities  of  want,  and  the  cant 
of  deputy  beggars.  And  even  Religion  oft  discards  the 
example  of  the  Divine  Teacher  who  hesitated  not  to  say, 
"  How  hardly  shall  they  that  have  riches  enter  into  the 
'  kingdom  of  God  !"  and  no  longer  ventures  to  test  the  sin 
cerity  of  her  neophytes  by  the  sharp  criterion,  "  Sell  all  thou 
'  hast,  and  give  to  the  poor ;  then  come  and  follow  me." 
Wisely  and  truly  does  she  warn  the  Poor  against  envy, 


368  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

hatred,  and  agrarian  convulsion — rightly  and  forcibly  does 
she  teach  them  that  no  change  in  society  can  be  beneficent 
unless  based  on  Justice,  Concord,  and  Love  —  that  from 
strife  and  malevolence  can  come  nothing  but  aggravated 
squalor  and  misery  —  that  Content  and  Competence  may  be 
found  quite  as  readily,  and  far  more  effectually,  by  most  of 
us,  by  limiting  and  regulating  our  wants,  than  by  increasing 
our  possessions — that  a  heart  at  peace  with  the  Father  and 
with  its  allotment  is  more  to  be  prized  than  all  the  wealth  of 
Peru — but  does  her  duty  stop  here?  How  speaks  she  to 
the  successful  devotee  of  gold  who  is  constantly  adding  to 
his  broad  domains  estate  after  estate,  as  though  he  would 
monopolize  the  Earth's  wide  surface  and  leave  his  brethren 
of  the  Race  no  dry  spot  whereon  to  stand  but  by  his  gracious 
permission?  —  who  would  deem  it  an  exorbitant  exaction  if 
he  were  asked  to  contribute  a  tithe  of  his  annual  gains  to  im 
proving  the  condition  of  his  unfortunate-fellow-men  ?  —  How 
seldom  do  her  oblique  and  vague  denunciations  of  avarice 
and  worldliness  disturb  the  enjoyment  of  their  well-placed, 
richly  furnished  pews,  though  directly  under  the  eye  and 
voice  of  the  preacher  ? 

Well,  thus  be  it,  so  long  as  it  must.  Let  the  champions 
of  Society  as  it  is  eulogize  its  structure  and  its  blessings, 
only  let  us  few  Dissenters  realize  and  proclaim  the  approach 
of  a  better.  Ay,  even  on  this  earth,  it  is  ordained  that  a 
better  condition  shall  be  realized  for  Man, — the  toiling, 
striving,  suffering,  famishing !  Not  until  the  dark  valley  is 
passed  shall  our  Race  be  doomed  ever  to  wait  ere  they  see 
the  kingdom  of  God  !  The  radiant  vision  of  the  Prophet, 
the  living  dream  of  the  Poet,  do  not  transcend  the  reality 
which  the  Father  has  decreed  for  his  earthly  children.  It 
needs  but  that  the  principles  of  Divine  Order  shadowed  forth 
(perchance  dimly  to  gross  apprehensions)  in  the  life  and 
words  of  Jesus  be  embodied  in  the  daily  acts  and  efforts  of 
His  professed  disciples,  and  Earth  shall  once  more  be 


GLIMPSES  OF  A  BETTER  LIFE.  369 

enrobed  in  the  vesture  of  Eden.  The  old  Record  of  the 
proffer  that  even  five  righteous  persons  should  suffice  to  save 
a  guilty  and  doomed  city,  is  written  for  our  admonition  and 
profit.  It  needs  only  that  goodness  be  goodness,  openly 
and  veritably,  to  commend  it  to  all  consciences  and  all 
hearts.  Were  there  but  one  community  whereof  the  love 
of  God,  as  evinced  in  entire  devotion  to  the  welfare  of  Man 
kind,  were  the  ruling  impulse,  the  whole  world  would 
speedilv  be  illumined  by  its  light,  and  transformed  by  its  ex 
ample.  But  the  life,  even  of  the  noblest,  is  devoted  to 
partial  ends  ;  its  aims  are  narrow  and  partisan  ;  its  efforts 
discordant  and  fragmentary.  The  manifestations  of  what 
ever  Philanthropy  there  is  in  our  wide  world  jostle  each 
other  ;  Religion  regards  with  doubt,  if  not  with  aversion,  the 
efforts  for  Human  advancement  which  are  not  made  through 
the  Church,  and  the  Church  is  in  turn  distrusted,  or  deemed 
inadequate,  by  the  philanthropist.  Thus  suspicion,  division, 
discord,  convulse  and  darken  the  world. 

Yes,  Division,  Alienation,  Isolation,  are  the  bane  of  our 
Race.  We  have  lost  the  knowledge  that  the  blessing  of 

D  & 

each  is  bound  up  in  the  blessing  of  all.  Fallen  Cain  blindly 
imagines  that  he  slays  but  his  brother,  his  rival,  his  trium 
phant  competitor  :  he  feels  not  that  he  is  slaying  himself — 
that  henceforth  a  sky  of  fire  shall  be  above  him,  and  an  earth 
of  blood  beneath — that  all  Nature's  voices  shall  speak  to 
him  the  wrath  of  God,  and  that  his  curse  shall  be  to  live. 
When  shall  the  At-One-ment  through  Christ  become  a 
living  reality  to  the  common  heart,  and  the  scales  of  Selfish 
ness  and  Discord  fall  from  our  eyes  as  of  old  did  those  of 
Prejudice  and  Hate  from  the  eyes  of  Saul  of  Tarsus  ? 

A  Social  condition  founded  on  and  penetrated  by  the  vital 
truths  of  Christianity — this  is  the  Problem  of  our  Age  —  a 
Society  which  shall  be  the  embodiment  and  palpable  expres 
sion  of  the  great  Law  of  Love,  in  which  servant  and  master 
shall  be  obsolete  distinctions,  Labor  no  more  a  drudgery  nor 


370  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

a  degradation,  and  Usefulness,  whether  exalted  or  lowly,  the 
sure  and  only  path  to  Honor.  It  shall  yet  be  achieved, 
through  struggles,  through  errors,  through  failures,  if  the 
imperfections  of  those  who  dimly  and  unworthily  apprehend, 
and  strive  to  give  expression  to  the  great  truth,  shall  render 
these  inevitable.  The  wintry  sullenness,  the  frozen  apathy 
of  the  mass  may  delay  the  dawn,  but  the  bright  Day  shall  come 
at  last.  Christ  never  intended  that  of  His  disciples  a  few  should 
enjoy  every  costly  luxury  which  Imagination  could  suggest, 
while  millions  famished  and  shivered,  wanting  the  veriest 
necessaries  of  life.  How  should  he  recognise  as  a  follower 
him  who  walls  up  thousands  of  fertile  acres  as  a  hunting- 
ground,  and  leaves  hungry  thousands  all  around  to  pine  in 
hunger  for  the  food  which  that  fair  domain  would  abundantly 
render,  and  which  they  have  now  no  place  to  produce,  no 
opportunity  to  procure  ?  To  my  mind,  the  most  formal  and 
hard-natured  Pharisee  of  olden  time,  the  most  sensual,  soul- 
denying  Sadducee  of  our  own  day,  would  be  recognised  as 
a  disciple  by  the  "  good  Master"  far  sooner  than  this  pillar 
of  "  Church  and  State,"  who  complacently  deems  Christ 
under  obligations  to  him  for  his  efforts  and  contributions  to 
spread  what  he  calls  the  Gospel. 

Man  has  fallen  and  is  divided  ;  he  must  be  raised  and  re 
united.  Darkened  in  understanding,  and  made  gross  by 
sensuality,  he  needs  to  be  taught  his  first  duty  to  his  brother. 
"  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself!"  —  how  read  you 
this,  upholder  of  War,  and  Slavery,  and  of  that  Social  Order 
which  leaves  millions  to  grow  up  in  Ignorance,  Want,  and 
Temptation  ;  which  provides  prisons  for  the  guilty,  and 
poor-houses  for  the  helplessly  starving,  but  makes  no  pro 
vision  that  the  still  innocent  and  nobly  striving  shall  have 
Opportunity  to  earn  needful  Bread  ?  His  children  look  up 
to  him  with  hollow,  anxious  eyes  ;  he  rushes  into  the  street, 
determined  to  find  employment,  however  repugnant,  and  how 
ever  meager  its  reward,  but  in  vain  !  He  returns  at  night 


GLIMPSES  OF  A  BETTER  LIFE.  371 

only  more  weary  and  more  wretched,  to  a  home  more  deso 
late  and  despairing  than  ever.  Vain  is  the  strength  in  his 
sinews,  while  strength  remains  there  ;  he  is  one  of  the  land 
less  millions,  and  has  no  resource  but  the  chance  that  some 
one  will  appreciate  and  require  his  services,  and  when  that 
fails  —  what  then  ?  The  prison  of  the  pauper  may  be  opened 
to  his  entreaties,  and  it  may  he  shut  sternly  in  his  face ;  the 
fact  that  he  has  energies  and  health  remaining  is  often  re 
garded  as  evidence,  prima  facie,  that  he  needs  no  alms  ;  as 
if  muscles  must  command  food,  with  or  without  opportunity 
to  use  and  profit  by  them.  The  prison  of  the  felon  is  his 
only  certain  resource. 

Tell  me  not  that  this  is  Christian  Society,  in  which  the 
widow  sits  toiling  from  dawn  till  midnight,  consuming  her 
slender  remnant  of  health  and  vision,  to  earn  of  her  sister 
in  the  church  the  smallest  modicum  of  food  and  shelter  with 
which  her  tender  babes  can  exist,  and  shivering  with  dread 
that, — by  the  delay  of  payment,  or  the  failure  to  obtain 
further  work,  —  food  and  shelter  may  fail  to  outlast  the  week. 
Tell  me  not  that  these  Cities,  in  which  thousands  are 
annually  driven,  by  keenest  want,  to  shame  and  destruction, 
do  truly  worship  that  Maker  with  whose  costly  temples  they 
are  so  thickly  studded  —  the  benighted  savages  who  abandon 
the  decrepit  and  incurable  to  famine  and  the  wolf  in  the 
lonely  wilderness,  are  better  Christians  than  these.  They 
at  least  have  the  plea  of  a  seeming  Necessity  to  palliate  their 
conduct ;  we  create  the  necessity  we  witness,  by  placing 
Virtue  on  a  rugged,  flinty  eminence,  and  presenting  a 
flowery  declivity  to  Crime.  Not  till  at  least  the  Christian 
who  possesses  wealth  shall  hold  it  as  the  trustee  of  the  Crea 
tor  for  the  benefit  of  his  children  —  till  it  be  recognised  as  a 
practical  axiom  that  "  the  Earth  is  the  Lord's,  and  the  full 
ness  thereof,"  —  given  not  to  aggrandize  the  few,  but  to 
bless  and  strengthen  all — never  till  it  be  established  as  a 
maxim  of  Political  Economy  that  Pauperism  is,  in  most 


372  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

cases,  far  easier  prevented   than  supported,  and  that  those 
who  possess  nothing  have  a  Right  to  labor  and  to  live,  a 
Right  to  education  and  healthful  development,  which  those 
who  possess  all  are  bound  to  recognise  and  give  effect  to  — 
not  till  it  is  felt  and  admitted  that  Society  commits  a  great 
crime  when  one  of  its  members  is  left  to  famish,  or  falls  into 
sin,  through  defect  of  education  or  of  Social  providence  in 
any  way  —  may  we  hope  to  withstand  triumphantly  the  host 
of  moral  and  physical  evils  which  now  overwhelm  the  Race. 
In  view  of  these  evils  and  their  causes,  how  shall  we  xhave 
patience  with  the    cavil   that   it   is   not   reform   of  Social 
Arrangements  that  is  needed,  but  of  the  individual  heart  ? 
Ay,  truly  does  the  individual  need  reform  to  induce  him  to 
enter  heartily  and  effectively  upon  the  great  work  for  which 
that  is  a  preparation.     "  This  ought  ye   to  have  done,  and 
not  have  left  the  other  undone."     But  when  he  is  regenerated, 
what  then  ?     Shall  he  go  on  adding  estate  after  estate  to  his 
possessions  ?     Shall  his  daily  life,  his  business,  his  dealings 
with  those  around  him,  remain  unaffected  ?     Shall  servants 
swarm  around  him,  living  for  his  convenience,  and  minister 
ing  to  his   luxury  or   his  pride  ?     Shall   the   poor    dread 
ejectment   from    his    tenements,  when    misfortune   or  mis 
calculation   shall   have  rendered  them  unable  to  meet  his 
legal  demands  ?     Shall  his  garrets  and  cellars  be  tenanted 
by  those  whose  every  hour  must  be  held  subordinate  to  his 
wishes,  and  of  whose  education,  moral  culture,  and  happiness 
he  takes  no  more  account  than  of  those  of  the  beasts  in  his 
stable  ?     Away  with  this  Pharisaic  pretence  !     Christianity 
demands  a  life  renewed  in  all  its  aims  and  relations,  in  which 
there  are  no  more  servitors  of  pomp  and  sloth,  to  be  treated 
superciliously  and  paid  grudgingly,  but  a  true  and  essential 
Brotherhood,  linking  the  noblest  and  most  fortunate  with  the 
most  dependent  and  benighted  of  mankind. 

To  constitute  a  Society  which  shall   conform,  in  both  its 
outward  structure  and  its  inward  life,  to  this  Divine  ideal, 


GLIMPSES  OF  A  BETTER  LIFE.  373 

is  the  great  duty  of  our  time  —  a  duty  which  will  yet  be  con 
summated.  Despite  the  sway  of  selfishness,  seemingly  so 
universal,  nobler  and  truer  thoughts  are  everywhere  breaking 
in  on  the  human  mind.  The  Statesman  in  debate,  the 
Poet  in  his  visions,  the  Novelist  in  his  exposures  of  the 
workings  of  guilt  and  the  daily  tragedy  of  life,  begin  to  lay 
bare  the  roots  of  Social  Evil,  often  unwarily  or  with  imper 
fect  apprehension,  but  yet  so  that  the  world  begins  to  startle 
in  its  lethargy  and  dream  uneasily  of  a  better  day.  That  day 
shall  surely  come  —  nay,  it  is  now  not  afar.  The  Chivalry 
of  Industry  is  already  replacing  that  of  War.  It  is  not 
Napoleon  nor  Wellington,  but  some  Fulton  or  Arkwright, 
who  shall  stand  forth  in  the  future  as  the  hero  of  the  Nine 
teenth  Century.  The  frightful  excess  of  Social  anarchy, 
misery,  and  destitution,  in  the  midst  of  the  most  abundant 
wealth  and  prodigality  the  world  has  ever  known,  is  driving 
millions  to  inquiry  and  study  with  regard  to  their  causes 
and  their  cure.  Knowledge  and  light  with  respect  to 
the  whole  subject  are  borne  on  the  wings  of  the  wind  to 
every  nation,  to  every  neighborhood,  and  even  the  most 
stolid  or  wilfully  adverse  can  not  long  refuse  to  listen  and  to 
learn.  And  yet  farther :  Practical  attempts  are  in  progress 
to  test  and  exhibit  the  possibility,  the  feasibility,  of  a  life  of 
true  Brotherhood  —  a  life  harmoniously  adjusted  to  blend  and 
secure  the  rights  and  the  happiness  of  each  in  those  of  all  —  a 
life  devoted  to  noble  and  exalted  purposes  —  a  life  ultimately 
freed  from  selfish  anxiety,  from  want  and  from  abounding 
temptation  —  a  life  of  which  the  atmosphere  shall  be  Inno 
cence,  and  the  labor  Worship.  Little  enough  of  these  vast 
aims  will  be  realized  immediately  —  they  may  be  pursued  for 
years  under  adverse  circumstances,  discouragements  and  dif 
ficulties — but  is  it  not  something  to  have  conceived  and 
adopted  them?  Let  us  not  doubt  that  the  ultimate  reali 
zation  shall  transcend  the  initial  hope,  and  that  through  their 
triumph  a  way  shall  be  opened  for  the  Social  emancipation 
of  our  Race.  32 


374  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 


THE  AIMS  OF  LIFE. 

Q.  What  is  the  chief  end  of  Man  ? 

A.  Man's  chief  end  is  to  glorify  God,  and  enjoy  him  for  ever. 

Westminster  Catechism. 

IT  must  be  deemed  unfortunate  that,  in  a  summary  of 
religious  doctrine  from  which  so  many  human  beings  have 
received  their  first  distinct  notions  of  God's  government  and 
man's  duties,  the  primary  and  most  important  truth  should 
have  been  set  forth  so  vaguely  and  obscurely.  How  many 
of  the  young  learners  of  that  catechism  have  any  clear  per 
ception  of  what  is  meant  by  either  question  or  answer  ? 

But  dissipate  all  obscurity  in  the  statement  of  the  problem 
and  in  its  solution,  and  the  matter  is  still  seriously  objection, 
able.  The  existence  of  each  individual  is  made  to  have 
two  purposes  or  aims — first,  God's  glory;  next,  his  own 
enjoyment.  He  is  called  into  being  to  gratify  two  selfish 
ends  —  one  the  Creator's,  the  other  his  own.  This  must  be 
wrong.  God  has  not  created  us  to  the  end  that  He  may  be 
glorified,  nor  with  any  such  purpose,  but  in  obedience  to  the 
dictates  of  His  infinite  beneficence.  He  has  given  us  being 
in  order  to  increase  the  infinity  of  good  which  pervades  the 
universe.  He  has  endowed  us  with  reason  and  conscious 
ness,  not  commanding  us  to  glorify  Him,  not  bidding  us  to 
enjoy  Him,  but  exhorting  us  to  omit  no  opportunity  of  doing 
good,  of  diffusing  true  Knowledge,  Wisdom,  Happiness, 
Blessing.  In  short,  God  has  not  created  us  to  subserve  any 
selfish  end  of  His  own,  nor  will  He  hold  us  guiltless  if  we 
pursue  only  such  ends  of  our  own. 

Am  I  wrong  in  assuming  that  our  ethical  and  clerical 
teachers  are  generally  deficient  in  their  inculcations  on  this 
head?  that  their  point  of  view  is  insufficiently  elevated,  and 


THE  AIMS  OF  LIFE.  375 

their  requisitions  too  scanty?  Is  not  the  vulgar  notion  that 
to  refrain  from  doing  ill  to  our  neighbor  is  virtue,  somewhat 
countenanced  by  the  usual  tenor  of  moral  exhortation  ? 
Does  not  the  commandment-keeping  squanderer  on  his  own 
luxurious  appetites  of  the  average  earnings  of  ten  human 
beings,  pass  in  society  as  an  innocent  and  often  as  an  exem 
plary  man  ? 

It  seems  evident  that  a  radical  reform  in  the  popular  ap 
prehension  of  religious  teaching,  if  not  in  the  teaching  itself, 
is  here  needed.  Since  the  earthly  pilgrimage  of  the  Divine 
4  Man  of  Sorrows,'  we  have  had  few  preachers  who  said 
frankly  and  pointedly,  'How  hardly  shall  they  that  have 
riches  enter  into  the  Kingdom  of  God  !' — '  Sell  all  that  thou 
hast  and  give  to  the  poor ;  then  come  and  follow  me,'  and 
so  forth.  Do  we  realize  that  these  were  not  the  exaggera 
tions  of  petulance  or  asceticism,  but  the  simple,  natural  con 
ditions  of  spiritual  health,  illumination,  and  progress  ?  What 
He  required  was  but  the  disencumbering  of  the  soul  of 
clogs  which  impeded  and  bore  it  heavily  earthward.  What 
Christ  said  of  wealth,  its  influences  and  proper  uses,  had  no 
mere  local  or  transitory  significance.  It  is  as  true  in  New- 
England  as  it  was  in  Palestine,  —  as  true  in  1846  as  it  was 
in  the  year  one. 

In  truth,  wealth,  employed  only  or  mainly  to  subserve 
personal  ends,  is  in  its  nature  incompatible  with  a  true  life, 
or  with  the  purpose  of  such  a  life.  The  man  of  substance, 
who  regards  his  riches  as  means  of  luxury,  of  elegance, 
of  power,  (other  than  the  power  to  relieve  and  bless,)  or 
of  continuing  such  advantages  to  his  descendants,  is  inevi 
tably,  palpably  beclouded  as  to  the  very  purpose  for  which 
life  was  given  him.  His  aims  are  selfish  and  groveling,  his 
understanding  darkened,  his  faltering,  grudging,  feeble 
efforts  at  goodness,  are  tainted  by  the  sin  of  Ananias  and 
Sapphira.  His  fealty  to  Mammon  will  ever  clash  with  his 
duty  to  God. 


376  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

The  true  disciple  of  Christ  regards  himself  but  as  the 
steward  of  whatever  worldly  goods  Providence  has  placed 
in  his  hands.  From  these  he  is  to  satisfy  the  necessities  of 
those  dependent  upon  him ;  all  beyond  belongs  to  his  Mas 
ter,  and  is  to  be  dispensed  according  to  His  plain  directions. 
Not  that  he  is  compelled  to  divest  himself  to-day  of  the 
means  of  relieving  wants  to-morrow ;  that  would  be  acting 
the  part  of  a  prodigal  and  thoughtless  steward ;  but  he  is  to 
dispense  or  reserve  whatever  has  been  confided  to  him  with 
single  reference  to  the  highest  good  of  all.  All  that  he  has, 
being  the  rightful  property  of  his  Creator,  is  to  be  dispensed 
according  to  the  model  ever  before  him  in  the  dispensation 
of  rain  and  sunshine.  He  whose  sympathies  or  beneficent 
efforts  are  circumscribed  by  any  boundary  of  family,  sect, 
neighborhood,  or  nation,  is  most  imperfect  in  his  obedience 
to  the  Father  of  lights.  He  who  is  content  to  enjoy  the 
fruits  of  others'  toil,  rendering  mankind  little  or  no  positive 
service  in  return,  can  be  but  a  very  distant  follower  of  the 
Divine  Redeemer. 

On  no  point  is  error  more  common  or  more  vital  than  on 
this.  A  life  devoted  mainly  to  what  is  deemed  innocent 
though  selfish  enjoyment  is  not  usually  regarded  as  incon 
sistent  with  a  Christian  profession.  The  wealthy  disciple 
may  devote  half  his  time  to  a  round  of  visits,  dinners,  tours, 
and  entertainments,  without  fear  of  reprehension  from  the 
sacred  desk,  and  with  little  danger  of  reproach  from  his 
own  drugged  conscience.  Yet  it  would  be  difficult  to  say 
wherein  such  a  life  excelled  that  of  the  less  depraved  hea 
then  of  our  own  or  ancient  times.  He  that  lives  mainly  to 
himself  and  his  kindred  can  not  truly  be  said  to  live  to  God, 
no  matter  whether  he  pray  with  his  face  to  Jerusalem, 
Mecca,  Rome,  or  the  sky.  There  is  no  savor  of  real  god- 
likeness  in  a  life  so  devoted. 

The  assumed  innocence  of  a  life  of  pomp  and  luxury  will 
never  bear  a  searching  examination.  It  is  not  possible  that 


THE  AIMS  OF  LIFE.  377 

such  a  life  may  be  lived  innocently,  no  matter  how  liberally 
it  may  be  garnished  with  tithes  and  prayers.  The  man  of 
substance  who  lives  in  luxury,  can  not  fail  to  render  the 
lives  of  other  human  beings  merely  auxiliary  to  his  own 
enjoyment.  Where  some  are  only  served,  others  must  needs 
be  merely  servants  ;  where  some  one  is  to  be  habitually 
gratified,  others  must  degenerate  into  the  mere  instruments 
of  gratification  —  the  machine  whereby  a  certain  quantum  of 
supposed  enjoyment  is  produced.  Wherever  one  man 
deems  the  services  of  other  human  beings  essential  to  his 
comfortable  subsistence,  and  repays  those  services  otherwise 
than  by  service  in  turn  —  wherever  a  family  is  divided  into 
two  or  more  classes,  holding  respectively  superior  and  in 
ferior  positions,  so  that  their  reciprocal  obligations  differ 
wholly  in  kind  and  degree  —  so  that  one  class,  and  but  one, 
lives  in  constant  dread  of  incurring  the  displeasure  of  the 
other,  or  rather,  of  incurring  the  consequences  of  that  dis 
pleasure —  there  is  a  relation  which  Christ  never  recognized, 
and  which  all  His  teachings  tend  to  condemn  and  overthrow. 
I  do  not  know  that  I  am  more  strongly  moved  by  any 
ordinary  spectacle  than  by  that  of  the  assembling  for  worship 
of  a  fashionable  and  wealthy  congregation  in  one  of  our  great 
cities.  As  the  rich  and  the  great  roll  up  in  their  carriages 
to  engross  the  superbly  adorned  pews,  the  poorer  and  hum 
bler  shuffle  in  on  foot,  and  take  the  less  desirable  seats, 
leaving  the  worst  of  all  to  the  crushed  children  of  Africa, 
whose  understanding,  it  would  seem,  is  deemed  so  acute 
that  they  need  not  hear  more  than  half  the  service  in  order 
to  comprehend  it  thoroughly.  The  same  equivocal  compli 
ment  is  paid  to  the  decrepit,  the  deaf,  the  superannuated,  if 
they  happen  to  be  hopelessly  poor.  But  the  great  man's 
coachman  is  not  even  supposed  to  hear  at  all.  Were  he  at 
liberty,  he  would  not  venture  to  present  himself  at  the  door 
of  the  family  pew  —  such  a  stretch  of  presumption  would 
cost  him  a  lecture  on  manners  to  superiors,  and  very  likely 
32* 


378  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

his  means  of  subsistence.  His  business  in  that  solemn  hour 
is  not  to  worship  God,  but  to  take  care  of  horses.  While 
he  assiduously  fulfills  this  function  in  the  shadow  of  the 
church  outside,  and  the  gilded  prayer-books  are  in  requisition 
within,  half  a  dozen  other  human  implements  are  busy  at 
home  preparing  the  sumptuous  meal.  For  these,  *  Sunday 
shines  no  holyday ;'  it  hardly  witnesses  a  relaxation  of  their 
labors.  They  may  have  some  vague  idea  that  the  obliga 
tions,  duties,  and  hopes  of  religion  are  divinely  intended  for 
all,  but  the  whole  atmosphere,  the  daily  necessities  of  their  life 
condemn  such  a  notion.  It  may  be  their  masters'  duty  to 
obey  God  ;  it  is  theirs  to  obey  their  masters  ;  and  in  this 
service  conscience  is  well  nigh  superfluous,  and  would  often 
be  an  embarrassment  and  obstruction.  Thus  they  wear  out 
their  lives  in  mere  brutishness  and  serfdom,  with  no  more 
mental  exercise  nor  development  than  the  domesticated 
animals  which  are  their  fellow  servants  and  daily  companions. 
How  many  families  contribute  annually  to  send  the  gospel 
to  the  heathen,  without  once  reflecting  that  their  practice 
and  example  make  a  great  many  more  heathen  than  their 
money  will  ever  convert ! 

To  insure  the  speedy  diffusion  and  triumph  of  Christi 
anity  throughout  the  world,  it  needs  but  to  be  carried  fully 
and  fairly  into  practice  by  a  part  of  its  present  adherents,  so 
as  to  be  plainly  observed  and  understood.  Were  a  single  coun 
ty  thoroughly  Christianized  in  all  its  institutions,  laws,  polity, 
usages,  the  world  could  not  resist  its  noiseless  appeal  for 
universal  conformity  to  its  order,  justice,  harmony,  and  hap 
piness.  It  is  because  Christians  are  content  to  differ  so  lit 
tle  from  the  pagan  world,  except  perhaps  in  theology,  that 
gross  darkness  still  overspreads  nine-tenths  of  the  habitable 
globe. 

The  time  is  at  hand  when  the  significance  which  once 
dwelt  in  the  disciples'  washing  each  other's  feet,  (and  not 
those  of  each  other  only,)  in  the  office  of  deacons,  in  the 


THE  MISSION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  379 

Lord's  Supper,  and  so  forth,  shall  again  be  apprehended 
and  realized.  Christianity  has  been  preached,  expounded, 
and  moralized  upon,  long  enough  ;  it  is  yet  (by  the  mass  of 
its  professors)  to  be  really  lived.  In  the  new  age  now 
dawning  upon  humanity,  the  Christian  slave-trader  and  the 
Christian  living  in  idleness  and  luxury  will  stand  on  the 
same  platform.  The  professor  who  lives  sumptuously  on 
the  unrequited  toil  of  his  slaves,  and  he  who  consumes 
largely  without  himself  laboring  to  add  anything  to  the  store 
of  human  comforts,  will  be  regarded  as  neighbors  ;  while  he 
who  requires  service  but  renders  none,  will  be  deemed  a 
most  unfaithful  subject  of  the  great  law  of  Love.  In  short, 
living  to  self,  or  to  any  ends  which  do  not  embrace  love  to 
God  and  the  highest  good  of  mankind,  will  be  deemed  the 
one  great  departure  from  rectitude  and  duty,  drawing  after  it 
all  essential  corruption  and  actual  transgressions. 


THE  UNFULFILLED  MISSION  OF  CHRISTIANITY: 

A   LETTER    TO    THE    READER. 

WASHINGTON  CITY,  May  4, 1812. 

*  *  *  IT  was  but  yesterday,  that  I  stood  in  the  great  Com 
mercial  Emporium,  and  listened  pensively  to  the  rustling 
tread  of  its  hurrying  thousands.  Here  passed  the  slave 
of  commerce,  the  devotee  of  gain,  with  vacant  gaze  and 
introverted  perception,  his  brow  working  unconsciously 
as  he  plodded  over  the  thousands  he  hoped  to  win  yet 
dreaded  to  lose  by  some  casual  turn  of  the  wheel  of  fortune  ; 
scanning,  perchance,  the  sky,  to  note  what  prospect  of  tem 
pest  or  favoring  gale  awaited  his  vessel  now  approaching  the 
coast,  hurrying  to  the  bulletin  for  news,  or  to  the  price  cur 
rent  to  learn  the  chance  of  profit  or  loss  on  his  ventures. 
Beside  him  trudged  unheededly  the  laborer,  with  his  swart 


380  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

brow  and  stooping  frame,  toiling  on  sturdily,  though  wearily, 
through  the  rugged  day,  with  thoughts  of  the  wife  and  little 
ones  whose  narrow  domicil  and  scanty  comforts  his  arduous, 
unremitted  exertions  barely  suffice  to  provide,  and  thinking 
sadly,  shudderingly,  of  the  period  just  at  hand  when  his 
present  enployment  shall  cease,  to  be  succeeded,  he  knows 
not  how  or  whence.  And  now,  there  pass  me  the  lawyer 
and  the  broker,  each  weaving  in  his  brain  the  spider-web  in 
which  some  poor  unfortunate  shall  soon  be  enclosed,  and 
gloating  joyously  over  the  anticipated  triumph  which  to 
another  shall  be  ruin.  But  list !  a  longer  stride,  a  more 
heedless  air :  here  rushes  by  a  reckless,  half-intoxicated 
sailor,  just  landed  from  a  voyage  around  Cape  Horn,  and 
hastening  to  spend,  in  a  few  days'  riot  and  debauchery, 
the  hard-won  earnings  of  as  many  years,  and  then  return  to 
his  monotonous  round  as  penniless  as  ever,  and  one  degree 
more  debased  and  brutal  than  before.  There  prances 
knavish  Bankruptcy  in  its  chariot,  spattering  the  thread 
bare  garb  of  some  ruined  creditor,  who  goes  before  on  foot ; 
here  trips  Fashion  in  lace  ;  there  hobbles  Beggary  in  rags,  as, 
with  counterfeited  limp  and  loathsome  travesty  of  the  human 
form,  it  whines  out  its  petition  for  alms.  *  *  *  And  now 
'tis  evening,  and  the  great  avenues  blaze  with  light,  as  the 
windows  of  the  palaces  of  Traffic  flash  with  gems  and  are 
radiant  with  the  display  of  costly  fabrics.  The  entrances  to 
the  haunts  of  dissipation  are  luminous  and  inviting  to  their 
victims,  and,  from  the  dark  purlieus  where  they  have  shunned 
the  glare  of  day,  the  votaries  of  sin  come  forth  to  flaunt  their 
little  season.  In  the  narrower  and  less  frequented  paths, 
darkness  holds  partial  dominion,  and  riot,  crime,  dissipation, 
and  fierce  contention,  have  recommenced  their  reign,  des 
tined,  it  may  be,  to  outwear  the  night.  Such  is  a  rude  and 
hasty  presentment  of  the  moral  aspects  of  a  day  in  Christian 
New-York,  where  thousands  are  assembled  (very  properly 
and  laudably,  I  doubt  not)  to  devise  the  ways,  and  contribute 


THE  MISSION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  381 

the  means,  to  cany  the  GOSPEL  and  its  attendant  blessings 
into  all  parts  of  the  globe. 

And  now  I  sit  in  Washington,  where  the  great  and  the 
honorable  of  the  land  are  assembled  to  shape  its  destinies. 
Their  voices  reach  me  in  my  narrow  chamber  ;  the  rattle  of 
their  wheels  is  borne  freshly  to  my  ear,  as  they  roll  over  the 
broad  avenue. 

The  commanding  might  of  Mind  is  here.  The  orator, 
whose  fervid  utterance  in  the  senate  has  reverberated  through 
the  vast  extent  of  our  country,  rocking  the  hearts  of  millions 
from  the  Aroostook  to  the  Sabine,  is  here.  The  demagogue, 
base  idol  of  a  multitude's  thoughtless  hosannas,  flatterer  and 
flattered,  corrupter  and  corrupted,  is  here  —  the  enchant 
ment  lent  by  distance,  dispelled  by  contact  —  his  essential 
nothingness  and  selfish  aims  gleaming  out  abundantly  through 
the  paint  and  patchwork  of  counterfeit  patriotism,  in  which 
he  has  arrayed  himself.  The  gaudy  blazonry  of  military 
pomp,  of  naval  prowess,  is  here.  Here  the  sleek  and  satis 
fied  official  jostles  the  shrinking  and  cringing  office-hunter 
from  the  walk.  Still,  as  ever,  amid  the  shows  of  luxury 
and  waste,  stalks  the  gaunt  form  of  penury  and  want,  pining 
for  a  crust,  as  it  gazes  through  blazing  windows  upon  the 
superfluous  banquet  on  which  thousands  have  been  squan 
dered.  Gliding  through,  checkering  all,  are  the  dark  figures 
of  the  low-browed  children  of  Cain,  bearing  ever  their  un 
mistakable  badge  of  servitude  and  degradation.  Here,  the 
gambler  and  the  debauchee  —  honorable  and  eminent,  it  may 
be  —  are  preparing  to  waste  the  midnight  hours  in  orgies 
whereof  the  speedy  issue  is  shame,  debasement,  and  death. 
Such  is  the  spectacle  presented  by  the  enlightened  metrop 
olis  of  this  Christian,  land,  whence  missionaries  are  radiating 
to  every  corner  of  the  world,  in  this  nineteenth  century 
since  the  advent  of  the  Savior.  In  the  long  interval,  the 
Christian  faith  and  worship  have  widely  diffused  themselves, 
but  where  is  the  CHRISTIAN  IDEA?  Where  lingers  the 


382  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

kingdom  of  universal  holiness  and  love  which  Jesus  came  to 
establish  ON  EARTH  ? 

Where  is  it?  I  see  around  me  the  stately  and  costly 
edifices  in  which  Herod  and  Dives  proceed  weekly,  with 
scrupulous  punctuality,  to  worship  God  in  pomp  and  luxury, 
as  followers  of  the  carpenter  of  Nazareth,  the  fishermen  of 
Galilee.  Christian  forms  and  observances  are  thick  around 
me :  where  is  the  Christian  spirit  ?  I  recognize  it  not  in 
that  lordly  pile  ;  not  within  the  folds  of  that  ample  surplice  ; 
not  within  those  richly-cushioned  pews,  which  an  humble, 
threadbare  stranger  may  not  enter  without  encountering  a 
frown,  nor  an  African  without  provoking  a  curse  on  his 
amazing  presumption.  Yet,  possibly,  in  that  poor  Ethiop's 
heart  the  divine  emotion  has  found  unsuspected  welcome ; 
it  may  glow  there  as  he  shrinks  tremblingly  into  some  ob 
scure  corner  of  the  edifice,  and  listens  rapturously  to  truths 
which  not  even  the  preacher  comprehends.  Perhaps,  in 
some  dingy  conventicle,  its  material  utterance  drowned  be 
neath  discordant  ejaculations  of  folly  and  frenzy,  of  fanaticism 
and  absurdity,  the  incense  of  a  genuine  devotion  is  ascend 
ing,  unmarked,  to  the  throne  of  the  everlasting  Father.  But 
is  this  the  fullness  of  the  kingdom  which  Christ  came  to  es 
tablish  ?  Shall  such  occasional  and  solitary  instances  be 
held  to  overbear  and  set  at  naught  the  sad  reality  of  a  world 
lying  in  wickedness  ?  Do  we  not  know  that  evil  and  an 
guish,  oppression  and  wretchedness,  wrong  and  despair,  are 
abundant,  nearly  as  ever,  among  the  children  of  men  ?  And 
is  not  the  world  yet  prepared  to  realize  that,  in  the  fullness 
of  the  Christian  dispensation  is  contained  the  remedy  for  all 
evil  —  for  all  that  is  not  incident  to  our  mortality,  even 
here  ?  How  long  shall  it  be  practically  regarded  as  a  form 
of  worship  and  a  code  of  difficult  observances  ?  Why  not 
rather  accept  it  as  a  divinely  appointed  means  of  entire  and 
immediate  emancipation  from  the  ills  of  our  earthly  con- 


THE  MISSION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  383 

dition  ?  Let  not  the  idea  be  hastily  condemned  as  extrava 
gant  ;  let  us  soberly  consider  it. 

When  Christ  directed  the  inquirer  to  sell  all  his  goods, 
and  give  the  avails  to  the  poor — when  He  declared  that  the 
rich  should  with  extreme  difficulty  enter  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  —  when  he  related  the  parable  of  the  pearl  of  great 
price,  &c.  did  he  merely  utter  extravagant  hyperboles  ? 
The  disciples  did  not  so  understand  him,  as  we  learn  by 
their  having  '  all  things  in  common,'  even  after  his  death. 
Did  he  propound  these  rules  in  exclusive  reference  to  some 
imminent  exigency  ?  So  it  does  not  appear  ;  nor  can  it, 
unless  the  command  to  love  our  neighbor  as  ourself  be  un 
derstood  to  have  a  like  limited  and  now  lifeless  significance. 
Why,  then,  should  the  Church,  or  assemblage  of  believers, 
prefer  the  interpretation  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira  to  that  of 
Peter  and  Paul?  Why  should  Christians  famish  —  nay, 
why  should  men  perish  for  lack  of  food,  while  in  Christen 
dom  is  abundance  ?  Why  should  believers  be  driven  to 
solicit  and  subsist  on  the  freezing  charity  of  our  political 
Organizations,  while  within  the  Church  is  ample  wealth  ? 
This,  surely,  is  directly  contrary  to  the  precept  and  exam 
ple  of  the  Apostolic  age.  I  have  not  traced  the  history 
minutely,  yet  I  am  confident  that  the  first  idea  of  a  universal 
and  permanent  provision  for  the  poor  and  destitute  origin 
ated  in  that  age,  with  Christ  and  His  apostles  ;  that  it  con 
tinued  a  work  of  the  Church,  and  not  at  all  of  the  State, 
down  to  a  comparatively  recent  period  ;  and  that  it  lapsed 
into  the  hands  of  the  latter  through  the  increase  of  temporal 
knowledge  and  wisdom,  and  the  decline  of  Christianity  as  a 
distinct  and  substantive  power  over  the  hearts  and  actions 
of  men.  If  so,  what  is  the  obvious  deduction  ? 

But  a  mere  provision  for  the  destitute  is  not  all  that  i,- 
contemplated  by  the  idea  of  Christianity.  In  that  idea  1 
clearly  recognize  the  germ  of  a  great  Social  renovation,  In 
teaching  mankind  no  longer  to  hate,  distrust,  and  destroy,  but 


384  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

to  love  and  cherish  each  other  as  themselves,  a  stupendously- 
beneficent  revolution  was  involved.  Alms-houses  for  the 
destitute  go  but  a  short  way  toward  the  fulfilment  of  the 
great  law  of  love.  Mot  merely  insurance  against  extremest 
misery,  but  provision  for  positive  and  essentially  equal  hap 
piness,  is  implied.  And  why  may  not  this  be  realized? 
Why  should  not  the  Christian  dispensation  become  the 
basis  of -a  new  and  benignant  Social  Order,  from  which  want 
and  wo,  fraud  and  wrong,  discord  and  antagonism,  shall  be 
banished,  and  the  highest  attainable  good  of  each  member 
be  striven  for  and  secured?  Why  may  not  such  an  order 
be  formed,  which  shall  secure  to  each  individual  not  only 
abundant  food,  and  clothing,  and  shelter,  but  education, 
also  —  intellectual  development,  and  all  the  means  of  rational 
enjoyment  —  requiring  of  him,  in  turn,  that  equal  and  just 
contribution  of  his  efforts  toward  the  general  weal,  which  the 
community  or  church  shall  require,  and  which  his  own 
capacities  and  preference  (very  rarely,  if  unperverted,  at 
variance)  shall  indicate  ?  And  why  may  not  our  race  thus 
emancipate  themselves  from  the  bondage  of  constraint,  and 
privation,  and  suffering,  in  which  they  so  long  have  labored 
and  groaned  ;  and,  guided  and  upheld  by  the  law  of  univer 
sal  love,  rise  speedily  and  surely  to  the  primal  condition, 
while  the  long  scourged  and  desolated  earth  shall  grow  ver 
dant  and  beauteous  again  ? 

This  is  a  vast  and  inspiring  theme.  I  should  not  venture 
to  speak  so  confidently  on  the  hopeful  side  of  it,  had  not 
loftier  and  serener  spirits  sounded  its  depths,  and  vanquished 
its  difficulties.  These  have  shown  that  the  renovation  of 
society  on  the  basis  of  the  Christian  idea  is  not  visionary, 
is  not  fantastic,  is  not  impracticable.  Nay,  undoubted  EX 
PERIENCE,  not  merely  in  the  repeated  and  enduring  instances 
of  the  Shakers  and  other  ascetic  communities,  but  in  those 
of  many  of  larger  faith  and  clearer  knowledge,  has  demon 
strated  this  cheering  truth.  There  is  no  longer  a  necessity. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  AGE.  385 

there  is  hardly  an  excuse  for  social  evil  and  degradation. 
The  means  of  avoiding  or  vanquishing  them  are  within 
the  reach  of  nearly  all.  The  system  of  ASSOCIATION,  or 
sharehold  property,  blended  with  Attractive  Industry,  pro 
mulgated  by  FOURIER,  does  away  the  last  objection,  that 
a  Social  Order  adverse  to  the  present  must  generate  im 
providence  and  idleness,  and  so  perish  through  human  in 
firmity.  Its  vast  economies  will  bring  wealth  within  the 
reach  of  all,  while  affording  them  the  amplest  means  and 
opportunities  for  intellectual,  moral,  and  social  elevation  and 
enjoyment. 

Carlyle  casually  remarks,  that  'a  man,  able  and  willing 
to  work,  yet  unable  to  find  employment,  and  thence  lacking 
the  means  of  subsistence,  is  the  saddest  sight  under  the 
sun.'  What  shall  we  say  of  a  Christian  famishing  in  a  land 
of  Christian  affluence,  because  the  means  of  earning  bread 
is  not  afforded  him  in  our  chaotic  and  warring  social  order? 
Surely  the  soul  of  such  a  one  must  appear  as  an  accusing 
angel  at  the  bar  of  Eternal  Justice  against  the  community  in 
which  such  a  tragedy  was  enacted.  Yet  such  a  calamity 
has  taken  place,  even  in  this  country.  Let  us  hope  that  the 
time  when  it  could  be  is  nearly  at  an  end,  and  that  the 
knowledge  of  its  possibility  will  soon  linger  only  as  a  fearful 
tradition  in  the  homes  of  the  children  of  men. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  AGE. 

I  HAVE  as  little  taste  as  faculty  for  fine  writing  ;  as  little 
appetite  as  aptitude  for  mere  sentimentality :  if  I  were  to 
attempt  even  a  love-story,  I  have  no  doubt  it  would  in 
sensibly  grow  into  a  socialist  harangue  or  a  dissertation  on 
the  causes  and  cure  of  human  destitution.  This  life  on 
which  we  have  been  lanched,  seems  a  problem  so  grave 
and  earnest  as  to  afford  little  time  or  thought  for  idyls  or 
33 


386  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

madrigals.  We  awake  in  it  to  find  ourselves  members  of 
the  great  body  of  Humanity  —  and  in  what  condition  is  that 
body  with  which  we  are  so  indissolubly  blended?  Of  the 
one  thousand  millions  of  human  beings  on  earth,  how  large 
a  proportion  —  certainly  more  than  half — pass  through  life 
sufferers  from  want;  —  want  of  opportunity,  of  education, 
of  shelter,  and  of  food  !  Millions  annually  perish  pre 
maturely,  through  ignorance  and  the  resulting  evils — vic 
tims  of  famine,  of  excess,  of  evil  habits,  unfit  aliment,  or 
lawless  passions,  from  which  a  better  training,  a  juster  idea 
of  the  laws  of  the  universe,  would  have  saved  them.  '  The 
people  perish  for  lack  of  vision,'  and  so  have  done  from  the 
first.  Ignorance  of  the  inexorable  laws  of  cause  and  effect 
which  bind  together  virtue  and  happiness,  vice  and  misery, 
has  ever  been  a  chief  source  of  the  W7oes  under  which  '  the 
whole  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth  together  in  pain 
until  now.' 

Into  the  midst  of  this  lazar-house  of  sin  and  sorrow, 
comes  the  angel  Religion  —  and  for  what  ?  Even  granting 
that  the  paramount  object  of  the  Savior's  mission  and  the 
Christian  dispensation  is  salvation  beyond  the  grave,  is  not 
the  parallel  design  to  mitigate  the  sufferings  and  rectify 
the  errors  of  this  present  life  still  obvious,  undeniable  ? 
The  evils  and  woes  over  which  Christ  sorrowed  were 
plainly  temporal  —  the  tender  concern  manifested  by  the 
Gospel  for  the  destitute  and  desolate,  is  not  confined  to  the 
future  life.  I  have  erringly  read  the  Scriptures,  if  the 
solicitude  therein  expressed  for  the  well-being  of  our  race  is 
at  all  confined  to  their  condition  in  the  world  beyond  the 
grave. 

Providence  has  cast  our  lot  in  an  age  of  intense  intel 
lectual  activity  and  progress.  The  proportion  of  the  human 
family  who  read  and  think  has  been  doubled  within  half  a 
century,  and  is  still  rapidly  increasing,  And  parallel,  with 
the  diffusion  of  knowledge,  speeds  the  consciousness  of 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  AGE.  387 

Brotherhood,  the  sentiment  of  love  for  all  who  breathe,  of 
sympathy  for  all  who  suffer.  All  over  the  civilized,  the 
Christian  world,  novel  agencies  and  efforts  of  benevolence 
attest  the  truth  that  rivers  and  mountains  no  more  suffice  to 
make  enemies  of  the  nations  separated  by  them,  and  that  the 
aspiration  for  universal  beneficence  is  rapidly  rising  to  its 
proper  place  of  guiding  impulse  to  mankind. 

And  how  does  the  Christian  Church,  —  using  that  term  to 
comprehend  and  designate  the  whole  body  of  believers  in 
Christ, — regard  the  advancing  spirit?  Does  she  joyfully 
recognize  and  tenderly  treat  it  as  her  own  child  and  servitor'? 
Does  she  cheerfully  submit  to  be  quickened  and  admonished 
by  it,  in  case  the  fire  kindled  at  her  altar  burns  brightly  on 
the  new  hearth  while  it  has  become  dim  on  hers  ?  Docs 
she  evince  a  cordial  and  thankful  willingness  to  see  the  good 
for  which  she  has  not  time  nor  means  wrought  out  by  other 
and  humbler  agencies?  In  short,  docs  the  Church  recog 
nize  in  every  instrumentality  of  good  to  man  a  coworker 
with  herself  in  her  glorious  mission,  and  rejoice  that  its  con 
summation  is  thus  visibly  hastened  ?  If  so,  it  is  well  with 
her  and  with  our  kind. 

But  let  the  Church  countenance  the  assumption  that  Re 
ligion  is  one  thing  and  Philanthropy  quite  another  —  let  her 
insist  that  her  concern  is  chiefly  with  the  things  of  another 
world,  and  at  the  same  time  frown  upon  the  efforts  of 
thoughtful,  loving  men  to  meliorate  the  condition  of  the  less 
fortunate  classes  in  this  —  let  her  ministers  and  oracles, 
themselves  amply  fed  and  cared  for,  speak  slightingly  of 
efforts  to  secure  honestly-earned  bread  to  the  needy,  and 
hold  it  a  light  thing  that  so  many  writhe  in  penury  on  this 
dim,  fleeting  earth,  —  and  it  will  be  very  unfortunate  for 
Philanthropy,  and  not  well  for  organized  Christianity. 

Ours  is  an  age  of  rugged  realities,  yet  of  boundless  hopes. 
On  every  side  men  are  awaking  to  the  calls  of  duty  and  of 


388  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

benevolence,  and  asking  '  What  shall  we  do  for  our  afflicted 
or  downcast  brethren  ?  By  what  means  may  we  do  most, 
1  in  the  little  span  allotted  to  us,  to  diminish  the  wrongs  and 
*  the  woes  endured  by  so  many  millions  of  mankind  ?'  These 
are  questions  which  the  Christian  Church  should  prepare 
herself  to  answer  conclusively.  Her  answer  should  be 
something  more  than  an  opiate  for  the  consciences  of  her 
wealthier  devotees.  To  say  that  if  every  one  would  serve 
God  and  work  righteousness  all  would  be  prosperous  and 
happy,  is  not  to  meet  the  practical  case  at  all.  We  do 
know,  beyond  doubt,  that  all  will  not  act  thus  wisely  and 
holily,  and  the  essential  question  will  not  thus  be  evaded. 
It  still  recurs  to  demand  of  the  fortunate  and  powerful  what 
they  as  Christians  or  as  men  propose  to  do,  feel  bound  to 
do,  in  the  actual  condition  of  things.  Here  are  a  Christian 
wife  and  her  young  children,  the  victims  of  a  reprobate, 
drunken  husband  and  father.  Are  the  dictates  of  Christian 
duty  satisfied  by  the  cold  assertion  that  if  he  who  should  be 
their  protector  would  but  refrain  from  being  their  tormentor, 
they  might  enjoy  comparative  happiness  ?  What  is  that 
worth  to  the  meek,  despairing  sufferers  ?  How  does  it 
excuse  those  who  should  be  their  neighbors  ?  Does  not 
the  question  inevitably  recur  in  this  form  :  What  can  we  do 
for  them,  in  spite  of  the  great  misfortune  which  has  befallen 
them  ?  Admit  that  he  who  should  support  and  cherish 
will  persist  in  robbing  and  torturing  them,  is  there  nothing 
which  can  yet  be  done  to  alleviate  their  miseries  ?  Answer 
this  question  in  the  affirmative,  as  you  must,  and  the  original 
line  of  defense  of  Christian  selfishness  is  turned  completely. 
We  are  brought  face  to  face  with  the  primary  question, 
modified  (or  rather,  fortified)  as  follows  :  Since  evil  exists, 
and  will  exist,  what  can  we  do  to  limit  its  blighting  in 
fluences  ?  Admit  that  the  transgressor  is  irreclaimable,  or 
that  no  benevolence  can  render  him  less  wretched  until  he 
abandons  his  vicious  courses,  and  still  it  may  be  quite 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  AGE.  389 

feasible  to  mitigate  the  sufferings  of  those  he  has  dragged 
down  with  him  to  perdition.  Nay,  more  !  We  might,  by 
patient,  loving  inquiry  into  his  past  history  and  circumstances, 
discover  causes  of  his  aberration,  as  yet  unsuspected,  which 
would  serve  to  soften  the  abhorrence  with  which  we  have 
learned  to  regard  him.  We  might  bring  to  light  facts 
showing  that  his  infatuation  is  not  so  wanton  as  we  have 
deemed  it,  but  that  influences  preceding  his  birth,  and  by  no 
means  confined  to  his  own  narrow  family  circle,  have 
powerfully  aided  to  make  him  what  he  is.  Having  been 
drawn  thus  far  in  exploring  the  individual  case,  we  may  see 
before  us  a  broad  ocean  of  inquiry,  stretching  away  to  an 
unexplored  continent  of  duty.  We  may  now  be  impelled  to 
consider  how  far  the  external  influences  which  have  con 
spired  to  make  some  men  drunkards  or  outcasts,  and  others 
felons,  are  controllable,  and  whether  it  be  not  practicable  to 
place  even  the  less  fortunate  in  such  relations,  and  train  them 
under  such  influences,  as  will  assuredly  preserve  them  from 
the  contaminations  and  perversions  of  which  the  fruits  are  so 
deadly.  We  know  that  the  children  trained  beneath  the  eye 
of  wise  and  Christian  parents,  amid  a  virtuous,  intelligent 
community,  shielded  alike  from  the  temptations  of  affluent 
grandeur  and  those  of  squalid  misery,  are  morally  certain  to 
be,  as  a  class,  better  than  those  who  first  open  their  eyes  in 
castles  of  indolence  or  hovels  of  despair;  —  and  why  shall 
not  this  knowledge  teach  us?  Why  shall  not  the  preser 
vation  of  the  unborn  from  the  depressing  and  debasing  cir 
cumstances  which  have  impelled  and  are  still  dooming  so 
many  millions  all  around  us  to  perdition,  become  the  par 
amount  idea  of  the  Christian,  no  less  than  of  the  philan 
thropist?  Do  you  demur  that  saving  men's  souls  from  cor 
ruption  in  the  present,  or  from  perdition  in  the  future  life,  is 
the  chief  end  of  the  Gospel  ?  Admit  this,  and  still  the  question 
recurs,  Can  you  hope  to  save  the  souls  immured  in  bodies 
subjected  to  every  debasing  influence,  without  removing  or 
33* 


390  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

counteracting  those  influences  ?  How  shall  you  hope  to  re 
generate  the  denizens  of  the  darker  haunts  of  depravity  and 
wretchedness  in  all  our  great  cities,  without  removing  them 
to  purer  homes  and  enabling  them  to  eat  the  bread  of  useful 
industry  and  virtuous  independence  ? 

It  is  not  long  since  the  thieves  of  London  —  that  is,  a  very 
large  number  of  them  —  were  called  together  by  a  philan 
thropist  who  had  obtained  a  clew  to  their  haunts  and  the 
means  of  commanding  their  attention  and  confidence. 
Treating  them  in  all  things  as  erring,  misguided,  unfortunate, 
sinful  brethren,  he  addressed  them  on  the  flagrant  iniquity 
of  their  lives,  the  more  palpable  ruin  to  which  such  courses 
inevitably  tended,  and  closed  by  exhorting  them  to  instant, 
thorough  reformation.  All  were  affected  ;  many  melted  to 
tears.  At  last  one  found  words  to  express  the  general  per 
plexity,  substantially  thus  :  *  Good  sir,  what  shall  we  do  ? 
As  thieves,  we  have  employment  and  obtain  some  sort  of  a 
livelihood ;  as  thieves,  we  have  companions,  friends,  homes. 
Will  you  insure  us  these  as  honest  men  ?  We  ask  no  reward 
for  becoming  honest  and  useful ;  but  we  can  not  consent  to 
starve.  Show  us  how  to  live  honestly  and  avoid  starvation, 
and  we  will  instantly  abandon  our  wretched  vocation.  But 
your  reputable  tradesmen  will  not  hire  us  ;  your  reputable 
workmen  will  not  tolerate  our  presence  in  the  same  shop 
with  them  ;  the  naked  choice  afforded  us  is  to  steal  or  starve.' 
And  thus  the  conference  ended,  the  good  Samaritan  baffled, 
puzzled,  discouraged.  He  could  of  himself  do  nothing,  and 
the  Church  was  too  busy  decorating  the  palaces  of  its  bishops, 
sending  dissenters  to  prison  for  non-payment  of  tithes,  and 
punishing  its  own  ministers  for  preaching  in  heretical 
chapels,  to  trouble  itself  with  so  vulgar  a  novelty  as  the  ref 
ormation  of  whole  battalions  of  thieves,  by  enabling  them 
to  earn  honest  bread. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  AGE.  391 

But  what  is  the  Church  to  do  ?  What  duties  are  in 
cumbent  on  her  which  for  ages  have  lain  unrecognized  and 
neglected?  I  answer,  Many;  but  this  first  of  all  —  To 
shield  at  least  her  own  members  from  the  temptations  and 
woes  which  are  inseparable  from  unwilling  idleness  and  con 
sequent  destitution.  Every  church  or  society  of  believers 
should  be,  to  its  own  members  at  least,  as  beneficent  as  an 
Odd-Fellow's  Lodge  or  Temperance  League.  It  should, 
at  least,  so  remotely,  faintly  approximate  the  first  church* 
at  Jerusalem  as  to  say,  '  So  long  as  it  shall  be  within  our 
ability  to  prevent  it,  no  member  of  this  body  shall  be  idle  or 
destitute,  who  is  willing  to  work  cheerfully  and  faithfully  at 
whatever  innocent  employment  may  be  offered  him,  and 
which  will  afford  him  a  subsistence.  To  this  extent,  at  least, 
the  idea  of  brotherhood  shall  be  actualized  in  our  relation  as 
fellow  Christians.'  This  would  be  found  in  practice  a  pro- 
dig;ous  step  in  the  right  path,  leading  on  to  others.  Let  it 
once  be  established,  as  the  common  law  of  Christendom,  that 
no  believer  may  stand  idle  and  famishing  amid  a  Christian 
community,  including  many  who  possess,  in  ample  measure, 
the  means  of  employing  and  rewarding  the  needy,  and  a 
broad  foundation  will  be  laid  for  a  gradual  and  enduring  re 
form  in  the  relations  of  wealth  to  want,  of  capital  to  labor. 
TVhat  the  world  pressingly  needs  is,  not  mere  alms-giving, 
but  less  necessity  therefor  ;  not  bread  in  idleness,  but  oppor 
tunity  and  just  recompense  for  industry  secured  system 
atically  to  all.  If  political  economy  and  the  advancing  tide 
of  democracy  can  secure  or  promote  these,  so  be  it ;  let  us 
welcome  any  helps  or  hints  that  the  progress  of  knowledge 
or  invention  may  afford  us ;  but  let  not  the  Church  seek  to 
excuse  herself  from  her  proper  responsibility.  In  the  spirit 
of  that  divine  appeal,  '  Lead  me  not  into  temptation,'  she  is 
bound  to  take  care  that  her  members  are  not  subjected  to  the 
trial  of  Esau,  but  that  each  one  of  them  is  secured  against 

*  Acts  ii.  44,  45. 


392  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

vagrancy  and  famine,  not  in  the  world's  cold,  degrading 
poor-house,  but  under  the  paternal  guardianship  of  Christian 
love.  When  she  shall  have  risen  to  the  altitude  of  this 
duty,  she  will  be  fitted  to  contemplate,  without  disrelish  or 
dismay,  the  broader  horizon  of  paternal  obligation  that 
stretches  away  beyond  it.  Heaven  grant  her  wisdom  early 
to  apprehend  and  joyfully  to  accept  her  benignant  destiny  ! 


THE  IDEAL  OF  A  TRUE  LIFE. 

A     FRAGMENT. 

THERE  is,  even  on  this  side  the  grave,  a  haven  where 
the  storms  of  life  break  not,  or  are  felt  but  in  gentle  undula 
tions  of  the  unrippled  and  mirroring  waters  —  an  oasis,  not 
in  the  desert,  but  beyond  it —  a  rest,  profound  and  blissful 
as  that  of  the  soldier  returned  for  ever  from  the  dangers,  the 
hardships  and  turmoil  of  War,  to  the  bosom  of  that  dear 
domestic  circle,  whose  blessings  he  never  prized  at  half  their 
worth  till  he  lost  them. 

This  haven,  this  oasis,  this  rest,  is  a  serene  and  hale  Old 
Age.  The  tired  traveler  has  abandoned  the  dusty,  crowded, 
and  jostling  highway  of  life,  for  one  of  its  shadiest  and  least 
noted  by-lanes.  The  din  of  traffic  and  of  worldly  strife  has 
no  longer  magic  for  his  ear — the  myriad  footfall  on  the 
city's  stony  walks  is  but  noise  or  nothing  to  him  now.  He 
has  run  his  race  of  toil,  or  trade,  or  ambition.  His  day's 
work  is  accomplished,  and  he  has  come  home  to  enjoy,  tran 
quil  and  unharassed,  the  splendor  of  the  sunset,  the  milder 
glories  of  late  evening.  Ask  not  whether  he  has  or  has  not 
been  successful,  according  to  the  vulgar  standard  of  success. 
What  matters  it  now  whether  the  multitude  has  dragged  his 
chariot,  rending  the  air  with  idolizing  acclamations,  or 
howled  like  wolves  on  his  track,  as  he  fled  by  night  from 


THE  IDEAL  OF  A  TRUE  LIFE.  393 

the  fury  of  those  he  had  wasted  his  vigor  to  serve  ?  What 
avails  it  that  broad  lands  have  rewarded  his  toil,  or  that  all 
has,  at  the  last  moment,  been  stricken  from  his  grasp  ?  Ask 
not  whether  he  brings  into  retirement  the  wealth  of  the 
Indies  or  the  poverty  of  a  bankrupt — whether  his  couch  be 
of  down  or  of  rushes  —  his  dwelling  a  hut  or  a  mansion.  He 
has  lived  to  little  purpose  indeed,  if  he  has  not  long  since 
realized  that  Wealth  and  Renown  are  not  the  true  ends  of 
exertion,  nor  their  absence  the  conclusive  proof  of  ill-fortune. 
Whoever  seeks  to  know  if  his  career  has  been  prosperous  and 
brightening  from  its  outset  to  its  close  —  if  the  evening  of  his 
days  shall  be  genial  and  blissful  —  should  ask  not  for  broad 
acres,  nor  towering  edifices,  nor  laden  coffers.  Perverted  Old 
Age  may  grasp  these  with  the  unyielding  clutch  of  insanity ; 
but  they  add  to  his  cares  and  anxieties,  not  to  his  enjoy 
ments.  Ask  rather  —  Has  he  mastered  and  harmonized  his 
erring  Passions  ?  —  Has  he  lived  a  True  Life  ? 


'- 


A  True  Life  ! — of  how  many  lives  does  each  hour  knell 
the  conclusion  !  and  how  few  of  them  are  true  ones  !  The 
poor  child  of  shame,  and  sin,  and  crime,  who  terminates  her 
earthly  being  in  the  clouded  morning  of  her  scarce  budded 
yet  blighted  existence  —  the  desperate  felon,  whose  blood  is 
shed  by  the  community,  as  the  dread  penalty  of  its  violated 
law — the  miserable  debauchee,  who  totters  down  to  his 
loathsome  grave  in  the  spring-time  of  his  years,  but  the  full 
ness  of  his  festering  iniquities — these,  the  world  valiantly 
affirms,  have  not  lived  true  lives  !  Fearless  and  righteous 
world !  how  profound,  how  discriminating  are  thy  judg 
ments  !  But  the  base  idolater  of  self,  who  devotes  all  his 
moments,  his  energies,  his  thoughts,  to  schemes  which  begin 
and  end  in  personal  advantage — the  grasper  of  gold,  and 
lands,  and  tenements  —  the  devotee  of  pleasure  —  the  man 
of  ignoble  and  sinister  ambition  —  the  woman  of  frivolity, 
extravagance  and  fashion — the  idler,  the  gambler,  the  volup- 


394  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

tuary  —  on  all  these  and  their  myriad  compeers,  while  borne 
on  the  crest  of  the  advancing  billow,  how  gentle  is  the  re 
proof,  how  charitable  the  judgment,  of  the  world!  Nay  — 
is  not  even  our  dead  Christianity,  which  picks  its  way  so 
daintily,  cautiously,  and  inoffensively  through  the  midst  of 
slaveholding,  and  drunkard-making,  and  National  faith-break 
ing —  which  regards  with  gentle  rebuke,  and  is  regarded 
with  amiable  toleration  by  some  of  the  foremost  vices  of  the 
times  —  is  it  not  too  often  oblivious  of  its  paramount  duty  to 
teach  men  how  to  live  worthily  and  nobly  ?  Are  there  not 
thousands  to  whom  its  inculcations,  so  far  as  duties  to  Man 
are  concerned,  are  substantially  negative  in  their  character? 
—  who  are  fortified,  by  its  teachings,  in  the  belief  that  to  do 
good  is  a  casualty  and  not  a  frame  of  being — who  are 
taught  by  it  to  feed  the  hungry  and  clothe  the  naked  when 
they  thrust  themselves  upon  the  charity  of  portly  affluence, 
but  as  an  irksome  duty,  for  which  they  should  be  rewarded, 
rather  than  a  blessed  privilege  for  which  they  should  be 
profoundly  grateful  ?  Of  the  millions  weekly  listening  to 
the  ministrations  of  the  Christian  pulpit,  how  many  are 
clearly,  vividly  impressed  with  the  great  truth,  that  each,  in 
his  own  sphere,  should  live  for  Mankind,  as  Christ  did,  for 
the  redemption,  instruction,  and  exaltation  of  the  race — 
and,  that  the  power  to  do  this,  in  his  proper  place,  abides 
equally  with  the  humblest  as  the  highest  ?  How  many  cen 
turies  more  will  be  required  to  teach,  even  the  religious 
world,  so  called,  the  full  meaning  of  the  term  CHRISTIAN  ? 

A  true  life  must  be  simple  in  all  its  elements.  Animated 
by  one  grand  and  ennobling  impulse,  all  lesser  aspirations 
find  their  proper  places  in  harmonious  subservience.  Sim 
plicity  in  taste,  in  appetite,  in  habits  of  life,  with  a  corres 
ponding  indifference  to  worldly  honors  and  aggrandizement, 
is  the  natural  result  of  the  predominance  of  a  divine  and 
unselfish  idea.  Under  the  guidance  of  such  a  sentiment. 


THE  IDEAL  OF  A  TRUE  LIFE.  395 

Virtue  is  not  an  effort,  but  a  law  of  nature,  like  gravitation. 
It  is  Vice  alone  that  seems  unaccountable  —  monstrous  — 
well  nigh  miraculous.  Purity  is  felt  to  be  as  necessary  to 
the  mind  as  health  to  the  body,  and  its  absence  alike  the  in 
evitable  source  of  pain. 

A  true  life  must  be  calm.  A  life  imperfectly  directed,  is 
made  wretched  through  distraction.  We  give  up  our  youth 
to  excitement,  and  wonder  that  a  decrepit  old  age  steals  upon 
us  so  soon.  We  wear  out  our  energies  in  strife  for  gold  or 
fame,  and  then  wonder  alike  at  the  cost  and  the  worthless- 
ness  of  the  meed.  *  Is  not  the  life  more  than  meat?'  Ay, 
truly  !  but  how  few  have  practically,  consistently,  so  regarded 
it?  And  little  as  it  is  regarded  by  the  imperfectly  virtuous, 
how  much  less  by  the  vicious  and  the  worldling  !  What  a 
chaos  of  struo^lino;  emotions  is  exhibited  by  the  lives  of  the 

J 

multitude  ?  How  like  to  the  wars  of  the  infuriated  animal 
cule  in  a  magnified  drop  of  water,  is  the  strife  constantly 
waged  in  each  little  mind  !  How  Sloth  is  jostled  by  Glut 
tony,  and  Pride  wrestled  with  by  Avarice,  and  Ostentation 
bearded  by  Meanness  !  The  soul  which  is  not  large 
enough  for  the  indwelling  of  one  virtue,  affords  lodgment, 
and  scope,  and  arena  for  a  hundred  vices.  But  their  war 
fare  can  not  be  indulged  with  impunity.  Agitation  and 
wretchedness  are  the  inevitable  consequences,  in  the  midst 
of  which  the  flame  of  life  burns  flaringly  and  swiftly  to  its 
close. 

A  true  life  must  be  genial  and  joyous.  Tell  me  not,  pale 
anchorite,  of  your  ceaseless  vigils,  your  fastings,  your 
scourgings.  These  are  fit  offerings  to  Moloch,  not  to  Our 
Father.  The  man  who  is  not  happy  in  the  path  he  has 
chosen,  may  be  very  sure  he  has  chosen  amiss,  or  is  self- 
deceived.  But  not  merely  happier  —  he  should  be  kinder, 
gentler,  and  more  elastic  in  spirits,  as  well  as  firmer  and 
truer.  '  I  love  God  and  little  children,'  says  a  German 


396  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

poet.  The  good  are  ever  attracted  and  made  happier  by  the 
presence  of  the  innocent  and  lovely.  And  he  who  finds  his 
religion  adverse  to,  or  a  restraint  upon,  the  truly  innocent 
pleasures  and  gaieties  of  life,  so  that  the  latter  do  not  inter 
fere  with  and  jar  upon  its  sublimer  objects  —  may  well  doubt 
whether  he  has  indeed  '  learned  of  Jesus.' 


HUMANITY. 

THE  watchword  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  is  BROTHER 
HOOD.  Rapid  and  wonderful  as  is  the  progress  of  Physical 
Science — valuable  to  Man  as  are  the  Steamboat,  the  Rail 
road,  the  Magnetic  Telegraph  —  mighty  as  are  the  results 
attained,  mightier  the  hopes  excited  and  justified,  by  the 
march  of  discovery  and  invention  —  the  great  discovery  be 
ing  made,  and  to  be  made,  by  the  children  of  men,  is  that 
of  their  community  of  origin,  of  interests,  of  aspirations. 
*  God  hath  made  of  one  blood  all  people,'  is  its  essence,  pro 
claimed  many  years  ago ;  the  new  truth  is  but  the  old  real 
ized  and  made  practical.  Humanity  refuses  longer  to  be 
separated  and  arrayed  against  itself.  Whoever  oppresses  or 
injures  any  human  being,  however  abject  or  culpable,  wrongs 
and  tramples  all  men,  himself  included. 

A  grave,  momentous  truth  —  let  it  be  heard  and  heeded. 
Hear  it,  grim  and  ruthless  warrior !  eager  to  rush  over 
myriads  of  gashed  and  writhing  bodies  to  coveted  fame  and 
power !  These  thou  wouldst  so  readily  trample  into  the 
earth  are  not  really  enemies,  not  merely  victims  —  not  some 
thing  which  may  be  separated  from  thee  and  thine  :  they  are 
thy  fellows,  kinsmen,  brethren — with  thee,  '  members  of  one 
another !'  and  of  Humanity.  The  sword  which  hews  them 
down,  maims  thee :  the  hoof  that  tramples  them,  wounds 
thee.  No  armor  ever  devised  by  cunning  or  selfishness  can 


HUMANITY.  397 

prevent  this  :  no  walls  of  stone  or  living  men  can  ward  off 
the  blow.  As  surely  as  the  verdant  tree  must  mark  its 
shadow  in  the  sunshine  —  as  surely  as  the  stone  projected 
upward  will  not  rest  in  mid-air,  but  descend  —  so  surely 
falls  the  evil  on  him  by  whom  evil  is  done  or  meditated. 

Miser !  heaping  Mp  fresh  hoards  of  yellow  dross  !  thou 
art  starving,  not  others  only,  but  thyself!  Bread  may  fill 
thy  garners,  and  thy  vaults  be  stored  with  ruddy  wines  ;  but 
Plenty  can  not  come  where  dwells  the  insatiable  thirst  for 
more ;  and  baleful  are  the  possessions  which  contract  the 
brow  and  harden  the  heart ;  speedy  and  sure  is  the  judg 
ment  which  avenges  the  woes  of  thy  pale,  hollow-cheeked 
victims  ! 

Libertine  !  believe  not  that  the  anguish  thou  so  recklessly 
invokest  on  others  shall  leave  thee  unscathed !  The  con 
trary  is  written  in  the  law  whose  date  is  Eternity,  whose 
sphere  the  Universe.  Fleeting  and  hollow  are  the  guilty 
joys  thou  scekest,  while  the  crimes  by  which  they  are  com 
passed  shall  darken  thy  soul  and  embitter  thy  thoughts 
for  ever ! 

And  thou,  humble,  self-denying  votary  of  the  highest 
good  —  the  good  of  thy  brethren,  thy  fellow-beings  —  vainly 
shalt  thou  strive  to  sacrifice  thy  own  happiness  to  brighten 
the  dark  pathway  of  the  needy,  the  wretched  :  the  kindly 
fates  will  not  permit  it ;  Heaven  will  persist  in  promptly 
repaying  thee  more  and  better  than  thou  hast  given.  Give 
all  thou  hast  to  lighten  the  burdens  of  others  to-day,  and  the 
bounteous  reward  will  not  wait  for  to-morrow's  sun.  It  will 
insist  on  making  thee  richer,  in  thy  hunger  and  nakedness, 
than  the  king  amid  his  pomp,  the  banker  amid  his  treasures. 
Thy  riches  are  safe  from  every  device  of  villainy,  from  every 
access  of  calamity  ;  they  can  not  be  separated  from  nor 
made  unavailable  to  thee.  While  thou  art,  they  shall  be  to 
thee  a  chastened  gladness,  a  tranquil  rapture  for  ever  ! 
^ 


398  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

And  thou,  saintly  devotee,  and  shrine  of  all  virtues  !  look 
not  down  in  loathing,  but  in  pity,  on  the  ruined  votary  of 
vice  and  crime.  He  is  here  to  teach  thee  not  pride,  but 
humility.  The  corrupt,  revolting  thing  he  is,  tells  thee 
what  thou  mightest  easily  have  been,  had  not  Divine  Good 
ness,  for  its  own  high  ends,  not  thine,  willed  otherwise. 
The  drunkard's  maudlin  leer  —  the  lecher's  marred  and 
hideous  visage  —  the  thief's  cat-like  tread  and  greedy  eyes 
—  even  the  murderer's  stony  heart  and  reeking  hand  —  all 
these,  rightly  viewed,  are  but  indications  of  the  possibilities 
of  thy  own  nature,  commanding  gratitude  to  God,  and  com 
passion  for  all  human  errors. 

Ay,  *  we  are  members  together  of  one  body'  of  Humanity. 
Whether  blackened  by  the  fervid  sun  of  tropical  deserts,  (*r 
bleached  by  the  fogs  of  a  colder  clime  —  whether  worship 
ing  God  or  the  Grand  Lama,  erecting  Christian  altars  in 
the  savage  wilderness  or  falling  in  frenzy  beneath  the  wheels 
of  Juggernaut — whether  acting  the  part  of  a  Washington  or 
a  Nicholas,  a  Howard  or  a  Thug  —  the  same  red  current 
courses  through  all  our  veins — the  same  essential  nature 
reveals  itself  through  all.  The  slave  in  his  coffle,  the  over 
seer  brandishing  his  whip,  the  abolitionist  denouncing  op 
pression —  who  shall  say  that  any  one  of  these  might  not 
have  been  trained  to  do  the  deeds  and  think  the  thoughts 
of  any  other  ?  Who  shall  say  that  the  red-handed  savage 
of  the  wilds  might  not  have  been  the  meek,  benign  village 
pastor,  blessing  and  blest  by  all  around  him,  if  his  lot  had 
been  cast  in  Vermont  instead  of  Oregon  ?  Who  shall  say 
how  far  his  crimes  are  treasured  up  against  him  in  the  great 
account,  and  how  far  they  are  charged  to  the  perverting, 
darkening  force  of  Christian  rapacity  and  fraud,  or  esteemed 
the  result  of  a  Christian  indifference  and  lethargy  only  less 
culpable  ? 

Away,  then,  from  human  sight  with   the   hideous  imple- 


HUMANITY.  399 

merits  of  human  butchery  and  destruction  !  Break  the 
sword  in  its  scabbard,  bury  the  cannon  in  the  earth,  sink  the 
bombs  in  the  ocean  !  What  business  have  these  to  disturb 
by  their  hateful  presence  the  visible  harmony  of  God's  uni 
verse  ?  How  dare  men  go  out  into  the  balmy  air  and 
bright  sunshine,  and  there,  in  the  full  view  of  Heaven,  essay 
to  maim  amd  massacre  each  other?  How  would  their 
wretched  babblement  of  National  interests  or  National  honor 
sound,  if  addressed  directly  to  the  All-Ruling,  as  an  apology 
for  wholesale  slaughter?  Who  would  dare  be  their  mouth 
piece  in  proffering  an  excuse  so  pitiful  ?  And  do  not  the 
abettors  of  War  realize  that  their  vile  appeals  to  the  baser 
passions  of  our  nature  resound  in  the  ears  of  the  Recording 
Angel  ? 

But  not  War  alone,  the  grossest  form  of  human  antagonism, 
but  ev  cry  form,  is  destined  to  a  speedy  extinction.  The 
celestial  voice  that  asked  of  old  the  terrific  question,  "  Where 
is  thy  brother  Abel  ?"  shall  yet  be  heard  and  responded  to 
by  every  one  who  would  win  profit  or  enjoyment  from  that 
which  oppresses  or  degrades  a  single  human  being.  The 
oppressor,  the  dram-seller,  the  gamester,  are  already  begin 
ning  to  listen,  perforce,  to  its  searching  appeal  —  listen,  at 
first,  perhaps,  with  frowns,  and  sneers,  and  curses?  but  even 
these  are  symptoms  of  the  inward  convulsion  —  first  mutter- 
ings  of  the  mighty  earthquake  at  hand. 

In  the  day  of  light  now  dawning,  no  relation  so  palpably 
vicious  as  theirs  can  possibly  abide.  But  theirs  are  the 
rude,  salient  outworks,  which  cover,  while  they  stand,  the 
smoother,  ampler,  sturdier  citadel  of  error.  That  all-per 
vading  selfishness,  which  forgets  or  disregards  the  general 
well-being,  is  yet  to  be  tracked  to  its  most  secret  recesses, 
and  extirpated. 


400  HINTS  TOWARD  REFORMS. 

The  avocations  of  Life,  the  usages  and  structure  of  Soci 
ety,  the  relations  of  Power  to  Humility,  of  Wealth  to  Pov 
erty,  of  served  and  servant,  must  all  be  fused  in  the  crucible 
of  Human  Brotherhood,  and  whatever  abides  not  the  test, 
rejected.  Vainly  will  any  seek  to  avert  or  escape  the 
ordeal  —  idly  will  any  hope  to  preserve  from  it  some  darling 
lust  or  pampered  luxury  or  vanity.  Onward,  upward,  irre 
sistibly,  shall  move  the  Spirit  of  Reform,  abasing  the  proud, 
exalting  the  lowly,  until  Sloth  and  Selfishness,  Tyranny  and 
Slavery,  Waste  and  Want,  Ignorance  and  Corruption,  shall 
be  swept  from  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  a  golden  age  of 
Knowledge,  of  Virtue,  of  Plenty,  and  Happiness,  shall  dawn 
upon  our  sinning  and  suffering  Race.  Heaven  speed  its 
glorious  coming  and  prepare  us  to  welcome  and  enjoy  it ! 


THE   END. 


RETURN TO: 


CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 
198  Main  Stacks 


LOAN  PERIOD     1 
Home  Use 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS. 

Renewals  and  Recharges  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  the  due  date. 
Books  may  be  renewed  by  calling  642-3405. 

DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW. 


FEB  2  *  MM 

FORM  NO.  DD6                        UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY 
50M    4-04                                                    Berkeley,  California  94720-6000 

GENERAL  LIBRARY  -  U.C.  BERKELEY 


BOOQ7M0737 


939825 


•J. 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


:       1 

i     :•  ;ii  i  >i    h 

I  ^N^IIIlpPpl-rr 


m 


